


In a Sleepy Town

by Duchesse



Category: Original Fiction - Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Bittersweet, F/M, Gender Neutral, M/M, Monster Romance, Original Fiction, Other, Reader Insert, Romance, Self Insert, Supernatural - Freeform, Tragedy, monster story, monster x reader, monster x you, original writing - Freeform, reader interactive
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-01-23 10:29:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21318709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duchesse/pseuds/Duchesse
Summary: “The horseman who rides atop his alabaster steed, cloaked in crimson without a head.”In the sleepy town of Moorwick, you are drawn into the legend of horseman when you learn it is associated with your father’s disappearance twenty years ago. When the local ghost story turns to be anything but that, and a bargain goes awry, you delve into Moorwick’s dark history with hopes of saving more than just yourself.[Headless Horseman/Reader]
Relationships: Dullahan x reader, Dullahan x you, Headless Horseman x Reader, Headless Horseman x You, Headless Horseman/Reader, Headless Horseman/You, Monster x Reader - Relationship, Monster/Reader, Monster/You, monster x you - Relationship
Comments: 21
Kudos: 126





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! It's been a hot second. This is the original project that has been taking all of my time away from writing fanfic. This is NOT a fanfiction; it is an original work, however, it is a reader insert with the reader-character being gender-neutral.
> 
> I'm putting it here on ao3 to basically keep it archived. I very strongly encourage you to give it a go and let me know if you like it! If chapter one gets a decent response, I'll post the current chapters and future updates as well!!

The town of Moorwick was in rapturous applause that day on October 27th. With their claps hard and strong, it became impossible to distinguish between them and the drizzle pattering atop of clusters of colorful coats lining the streets outside of town hall. There, a number of officials of town council found agitation that the ceremony should be held today in the rain, rather than break decade’s old tradition and host it in the thickness of morning fog tomorrow or next week.

In the four day span of your stay in Moorwick as of current, you became well acquainted with the region’s autumnal weather which seemed to entail invigorating, crisp air at night in companionship with the type of rainfall that managed to seep through your clothes, flesh, and left you cold to the marrow. During the day, there seemed to be no shortage of police at work with their shrill sirens and flipping lights to block off landslides on the main roads from overnight.

Three of those landslides had thwarted your passage into Moorwick for a solid three days, leaving you to the mercy of cruddy motels overcharging for beds with stains a tad too dark to be anything auspicious, and water with the faintest tinge of yellow.

During checkout at the final detour of your trip, the man at the desk went on a tangent about the old days as a fisherman on the coastline right up until his eye was plucked out by a crab and had to retire. You managed sounds from your throat that quivered from your discomfort, attention floating from the adjacent hallways hoping to reel another patron in alongside you.

“By the way there, you ain’t heading towards Moorwick by any chance, are ya?”

When you turned forward again, the man was nearly bent all the way across the counter, elbows just nearly reaching the end of the desk. In his one eye that didn’t catch an unnatural sheen from the dim, orange light overhead, you thought you saw traces of lunacy in it; the stare of a man with the anxiety and burden of stories to share.

You honestly didn’t want to know.

“Yeah,” you offered with a withering voice. “Going there for family stuff and whatnot. The town has a website, it looks nice enough. But, they always do, right?”

The man shrunk back from the counter to his own side, digging his heels back down onto the floor. He regarded you with such a pitying look and a frown that it spurred a rush a shame to creep up your neck and across your face. “I see. Well, best do ya business and leave. Take my word for it when I say, don’t go below the surface. Sometimes, taking things as they appear is better.”

He pulled a receipt from the register under his desk, fumbled with it in this knobby hands and bulbous knuckles to smooth out the wrinkles before handing it over to you. There for a moment, the slip of white paper hovered aloft in the man’s hand, unable to find yourself willing to reach for it.

Quick to take your reluctance in stride, he gave a hearty laugh that broke into hoarse cracks of coughs that he smothered behind a fist. “I only say- I only say that because ya giving me the feel of one of those folks who just doesn’t let things be.”

You slipped the receipt from his fingers quickly, crushing it into a wad against your palm with a taut smile pressing lines into your face. “Won’t say you’re wrong. Take care.”

His words stayed with you for days afterward, staved only by the static of the radio as your only friend on the stretch of road alongside the forest. The trees had tantalized you into a lull, unassuming yet you often found your eyes veering from the road towards them as though noticing a stare from across the room. It was a sensation that ensnared you all the same even after your arrival in Moorwick.

The day of the ceremony at present wasn’t an exclusion to this. By that point, the rain had tapered into a fine mist that dampened your skin as you shucked the hood from your raincoat behind your head, face pointed purposefully ahead.

Standing front and center now on the lowest steps of polished, slick stone was the mayor of Moorwick; a man barely decade more than your own, though even that was a generous assumption. As he reached towards his face, a single finger erect to move aside a piece of dark hair that had fallen out of place, a silver medal hanging by a thick ribbon of deep blue rattled in his hand. The other held a simple plaque with inscribed with gold in the black facing.

He surveyed the crowd slowly, undoubtedly recognizing all of the faces present there in the crowd until you felt his gaze settle on you. It had to be that you were still paranoid from the car ride there, you thought; the mayor and yourself had never once crossed paths, not once. You were certain of that.

And yet, you were familiar to the chill that gripped you when you were being watched, observed. It was different this time around; it wasn’t some intangible entity that haunted the foot of your bed at night, rather a man of flesh and bone with a stare that seared into you. Your heart plunged into your stomach, forcing your legs to shuffle around in place, feeling the men on either side jostle you with their elbows as they clapped along with the rest.

Just as you thought to yank the hood up to conceal yourself, his head snapped to the side while a smile fit for a dashing gentleman carved into his lips, teeth a glistening white. He took several paces to the side, arm extended to mold against an elderly woman’s back as she ambled out from the crowd, holding a hand against her hip as she went.

“Hard to believe it’s been twenty-three years since we began doing this, right?” he spoke mirthfully, his voice hummed from a pair of speaks located on adjacent sides of the sprawling crowd. “Once again, for the twenty-third year in a row, I would like to present this, uh, award to Moorwick’s very own Asta Lang! One-hundred forty-five, can you believe it?”

The commotion grew louder by the second; the buoyant shouts and cheers, whistles and clapping had began to warp together into a single cacophony of noise so grating it struck you between the eyes. Although the clouds held their dismal tone, distended over the town like an ominous specter, and ruckus was head-splitting, you willed your feet to stay anchored to the front row.

You clapped along with everyone as Asta, a rather short and frail seeming woman with gray hair situated in intricate braids, bowed her neck towards the mayor to accept the medal and plaque. Once adjusting the ribbon at her neck, he cuffed an arm around her again and ducked his head near her ear.

Asta found you then, undoubtedly with the help of the mayor, and her thin lips pulled high close to her wrinkled cheeks dabbed in roughly blended fuschia. She turned her hand towards you, waving far more vigorously than she had for anyone else, keeping her smile long enough to tempt one of your own.

“Asta Lang, everyone! Asta Lang, give her a good round of applause.” His words won him that response, rousing yet another wave of cheer through streets that quickly ebbed like a tide receding from shore when he shook a hand above his head. “So, just a reminder, good folk! The parade is only four days away!_ Four_! Make sure to submit your booth tickets and finalize paperwork with the town council. We want this year’s parade to be the best yet! Don’t forget the contest in unmasking this year’s Headless Horseman. Who will it be?”

You were relieved to find your opportunity to shoulder your way through the sea of bright raincoats to the opposite end where you had seen Asta depart just moments ago. The mayor had such an air about him that it was hard to not find yourself captivated by what he had to say, yet strangely all he had to say was nothing of consequence to miss.

Either way, you seized your escape and trotted across the grass sinking underfoot with a trail nipping at your heels whilst shoe-prints gushed with brown rainwater. You found Asta some ways off from town hall at that point, heading towards the main road with her husband in tow and the shiny new medal still hanging low against her chest.

“One-hundred forty-five, even I can’t believe it. I’ll fix all of that moaning and groaning from those youngsters wanting my spot by downing a whole bottle of prosecco and cheese.” Asta gave a huff as you eased yourself into a slower stride alongside of them. “But look here. Isn’t it beautiful? It will look wonderful on the mantle, won’t it, Winston?”

She pinched the thick silver coin between her fingers near his face, an older man himself of one-hundred twenty with the looks of one barely challenging his seventies. He adjusted the rim of his tweed hat with a crooked finger, nudging at his wrinkled brow with a thumb as he leaned in to get a better look at the medal.

“Quite nice it is, ah, but,” he stuttered, flicking the medal a few times. “Will it fetch a nice price, I wonder?”

Asta swatted his hand away hastily, tucking the medal under the protective layers of her coat, offering her husband a final admonitory glance before finally turning towards you. Four days into knowing this woman did not lessen your astonishment that she was truly one-hundred forty-five; the wrinkles in her face did not align with your imagery of a human to have reached that age. You complimented her upon your first meeting, saying she couldn’t have been older than eighty- she seemed moved to tears.

“This fool doesn’t know anything, just ignore him,” Asta gestured with her head towards him, receiving a dismissive wave in return. “Oh, yes, dear, won’t you join us for dinner? Before we left for the ceremony, I put in just the loveliest roast. Winston and I haven’t had guests over in a long time, it would be nice to have that company again, won’t it?”

Winston gave an affirmative grumble, reaching towards his neck to stroke the loose skin hanging low. “I would say so. Could give us a good excuse to pull out the red wine from the cellar. It’s a fantastic age now.”

“Oh, Winny,” Asta sidled closer to him, fussing with the hat on his head. “You know what the doctor said. Don’t you dare. I may do my morning walks, but I don’t have the energy to haul your ass to the cemetery.”

Their exchange was an oddly endearing thing, urging you to smother a laugh in your throat that radiated out into your voice. “Are you sure you wouldn’t mind the company? I haven’t had roast since I was a kid.”

Asta shuffled closer to you again, carefully winding her arms around one of yours, holding onto you in a manner that you felt was almost protective. “Yes, yes, my dear. We’d love that. I’d rather you spent time with us rather than… sitting in that empty old house.”

“Been empty for twenty-some years now, hasn’t it, Asta?” Winston said, ruminating on this as he curled his fingers inward to rotate the gold wedding band clearly too small for the swelling in his hands. “Hard to believe it’s been over that already. When you get to a certain age, you just stop counting. You become a little less pressed on time you’ve lost, and focus more on what you can still be doing.”

“Mmm, that is true, getting old has its perks,” Asta jutted her lips, dark eyes flicked heavenwards in momentary thought, tightening her arms against yours more. “That aside, I would also like to talk to you about, well, your father as well. That’s why you’re even here in Moorwick, to begin with.”

The mention of him jerked your head towards her sharply, curiosity piqued, meanwhile, the thick letter resting in the knapsack on your back felt a great deal heavier than it did before. It’s unlikely you would have ever found your way to Moorwick had it not been for the letter, being that it was a town days from any significant metropolitan area. It wasn’t exactly the most accessible location.

You dug your heels into the soggy ground, pulling Asta to a sudden halt that teetered her a bit too much. “Asta, what can you tell me about–”

“Oh, good, good! I didn’t miss you all just yet!” called the voice of the mayor from a distance. He approached with careful strides through the grass, hiking his pants above his ankles so as to not sully them with rainwater or mud. He had yet to come to a full stop before he had his hand extended towards your waist, straight and rigid, and clad in black wool.

You took a step away, disarmed by just about everything about him. From a distance, he was rather attractive, but up close he was unarguably handsome with eyes that you likened to amber and a warm complexion. His hair was far more disheveled than it had been previously, making you ponder on whether his townsfolk turned into an angry mob, or he ran all the way here.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he clicked his tongue, flinching as though to reprimand himself. “Colson Sinclair, mayor of Moorwick. It’s always a pleasure to see new faces.”

Edging a smile to your lips, you took his hand and gave a strong shake, a slight nod, and offered your name to him as well. “Nice to meet you as well, Mayor Colson.”

“Just Colson is fine, no need for the formalities,” he flashed you a radiant smile, dwelling on the handshake for a moment longer before slowly releasing your hand. “I heard you’ve moved into your old man’s house. About time someone occupied it, it’s just been sitting empty all this time. Your father though, I’m so sorry to have been the one to-to, well, break you that news.”

You stared him in the face, matching the intensity of his own stare. “Do you know much about my dad, Mayor Colson? I’m trying to learn everything I can, come to terms with it, y’know?”

Colson made a noise under his breath, tilting his head against a bent finger scratching his cheek. “He and I were colleagues for a while, worked as a notary in town hall for a handful of years. Actually, he may have been there before I even became mayor. It’s been twenty years, stuff gets fuzzy.”

Your eyebrows jumped up, yet you were careful with your words. They spun in your mind and danced like fire on the tip of your tongue. Nothing he said made sense, perhaps it amounted to nothing more than the stress of his responsibilities, though.

The silence that permeated the air was disrupted by Asta as she gave a noisy sigh that hissed through her teeth. “Children, if you will, my feet are wet and I am cold. I would like to go home and enjoy my roast. Colson, you come along as well. There’s enough for everyone.”

Colson patted a hand against his chest, his laughter was airy and smooth. “Always looking out for me, Asta. I’ll have to take a rain-check on that, I’m sorry. Don’t make that face. Another time.”

With that left said, Colson was quick to toe his way across the drenched ground to the sidewalk, smoothing out his pants and giving a swipe across his peacoat and hands. He left for an unfamiliar part of town to you, towards the harbor, if you had any recollection of the layout.

Tall sheets of fog waited ahead for him there, yet just as in his greeting to you earlier, he was dauntless and ventured towards it without so much as a falter in his step.

“Really strange guy.” You said, passing a furtive look towards the older couple.

Asta flicked her fingers with a scoff. “He isn’t a half-bad kid when you get to know him.”

“He’s a punk who’s never worked a day in his life,” was what Winston had to say, removing himself from Asta’s side to mosey on the path towards home. “I’d like to get home before dark, if you don’t mind.”

By the time you reached their home, the slithers of light through the bloated clouds had all but been swallowed by the curtain of nightfall. You thought that the night in Moorwick was darker than in the city; darker than anywhere you had ever been for that matter. There was a stillness in the air accompanied by a silence that felt loud in your ears.

It came to a great relief to you once you were settled at their dining room table, a quaint little round table fixed with a beige tablecloth that glistened beneath the light with accents of lace. With a single look around, you knew that their home was a treasure trove of precious memories collected over nearly a century. A number of trophies and medals were lined meticulously along shelving on the walls, undoubtedly untouched for decades and a delightful home to some crawlies.

“In my youth, I was an athlete,” Asta explained at your side with her carving knife and tongs as she pulled apart the succulent roast from the bone and nestled a good portion on your plate. The warmth of the morsel wafted around your head and in your nose; it was a comforting embrace from the bite of the autumn night and your unease. “I once tried out for the Olympics, you know.”

You rested your hands atop your thighs, drumming your fingers there to sate your impatience. “Oh, really? What for?”

She continued to gingerly load your plate with sauteed vegetables, as well as the stewed potatoes and carrots that had been marinating in the roast broth all day, meanwhile reminiscing on the better part of her life spent as a gymnast. Losing her chance at the Olympics did something to her, she told you, still harboring some weight of dismay in her tired voice.

“You’ve always done your best, Asta.” Winston flicked out a handkerchief to lay it flat across his thighs. “Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve never done less than that.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true.” She replied, wiping her hands clean before taking her seat at the table.

Dinner passed pleasantly with Asta and Winston as they recalled times during their youth, particularly of their adventures getting hitched and gallivanting from country to country for a time, typically stowing away on boats to get to where they were headed. Their retelling of those stories meant something to them, you noticed it in the way their faces were aglow, their smiles just a little wider, and the softness that touched their eyes when they gazed at one another.

For a time, it was enough to deter your thoughts from the inevitable, until when it wasn’t. The tip of your fork lightly skimmed across the embossed veins throughout the plate in front of you, emitting a shrill scratch on occasion.

It was enough of an indication that the time had come. Winston was the one to collect the dishware and take it from the table while Asta led you towards the front of the house into the sitting room. There the ceiling seemed to move away from you and the room expanded wider at all sides. It was filled with the very same kind of novelties that gave the rest of their home its charm, and a pair of armchairs far too exquisite for you to sit in, but where Asta led you anyway.

“Take a seat, take a seat,” she gestured to your chair, chest rising and falling sharply with a sigh. “There is a lot for us to talk about. Some of it is better to sit to hear.”

The purple seat groaned beneath your weight when you dropped into it unceremoniously, knapsack pulled in front of you like a child’s toy while you rummaged it for a moment. Your fingers skimmed across a textured envelope, sturdier and far thicker in design than anything you had received before.

Asta’s jaw tightened at the sight of it, her chin tilting higher while her thumbs danced across each other atop a crossed knee. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen that. I’m glad it ended up in your hands.”

You nodded your agreement, dropping the stout envelope on the glass table positioned between your chairs. “I wouldn’t have found out anything otherwise. I’m still confused that I had to find out everything through a couple of letters instead of a phone call.”

“Would you have believed a phone call?” she challenged. “After all, we spoke a few times before you found your way here. I stay true to what I said before. I won’t guarantee the information I have on your father is what you want to hear.”

With a thin smile, you shifted to the edge of your seat and twisted your fingers together between your legs. “Asta, I packed two suitcases and barely gave my job notice that I’d be gone. I drove across the country for nearly a week, got caught up in three landslides, and now I’m here in an empty house that used to belong to my dad. I’ll be fine.”

“Yes,” she choked a laugh, a grin. “Yes, I think you will be as well.”

Just as Asta’s laughter settled into jumps in her chest, Winston shuffled into the room with a silver tray nestling an ornate teapot with a tall spout and a pair of cups similarly crafted. His hands trembled with the weight of the teapot, nearly missing the cups as he poured. “It’s a special blend, my own special blend at that. Never met a person who disliked it. Don’t be the first.”

You took the saucer and cup from him as he handed it to you shakily. “I wouldn’t imagine it.”

“Good, good,” he chimed, dropping a cube of sugar and then two more into the other cup, likewise offering it to his wife afterward. “Three cubes of sugar, tablespoon of honey. Just the way you like it.”

Asta craned her neck back to plant a kiss on his cheek, sending him off from the room then so you were alone with her. The first sip she took, she swallowed and blew out a breath; the second sip loosened her shoulders and molded her into the chair.

“As you know from the letter, your father is legally acknowledged as having passed. As you are the next of kin- his only kin, his belongings and property are now yours, should you choose to have them.” Asta began, lowering her cup to the table below. “It’s all a very complicated situation. My, how to begin…”

You didn’t drink from your tea, rather you moved it to the table similarly. “He wasn’t present for most of my life, he upped and just disappeared one day. No explanation. No phone calls. No birthday cards, Christmas gifts. And then twenty-something years later, I get a letter with an official seal saying he’s passed, but you wrote me one, too.”

“Yes, yes, I did,” Asta replied, collectedly. “I asked Colson to have my letter included to you as well. Colson wrote to you all of the legal information, but I wasn’t satisfied with that. I wanted you to have a better understanding of the circumstances.”

Your eyes dropped towards the letter atop the glass table, recalling the pain that gripped your heart like a vise and opened a void in your gut. “Colson says dad is dead, you say he disappeared.”

“He disappeared twenty years ago on a rainy day in November, I remember it well.” Asta bobbed her head slowly, much like in a motion of a mechanical doll. “I will admit, no one truly knows anything about the circumstances around his disappearance. There was nothing left behind, there was never culprit, nothing to collect. Only a fascination.”

She was egging on your curiosity, coaxing you to want to delve deeper into it. Whether it was by the uncertainties already surrounding this situation, or the innate sensation to recoil- trepidation of an unalterable outcome, you hesitated to push the words from your lips.

“Fascination… of what kind, exactly?”

“Of a kind that I wonder whether you’ll be able to understand.” Asta eased closer to the end of her seat, reaching for the spoon in her teacup to swirl the black drink inside. “Moorwick has been my home for a very long time, and with my age, I have learned that the world is far more complicated than we give it credit for. Your father disappeared somewhere on the outskirts of the forest.”

You stared at her. “Was it searched?”

“The forest? Oh, dear, the Atticus Forest takes weeks to thoroughly search, and even then it would be easy to miss something. For a time it was, by daylight at any rate.” She continued, “You see, your father was fascinated by forest and what may be hidden there.”

The way she spun her story to you sent your mind down a path you weren’t sure you wanted to hear. There in the sanctuary of her beautiful sitting room, you felt the cold grip of something at the back of your neck, bristling the hairs there and bumps high across your arms. Although the room bathed in a soft light, leaving no shadow to the vividity of the mind, you still sat there exposed to this room and town with a large chip in your armor.

With some dubiety to her, and the thoughts that swarmed in your head, you spoke at last without knowing what would tumble out in tones of your voice, “So, you’re basically telling me that a ghost took him.”

There was something in the way that Asta withered back into her chair, taking a moment glimpses from the corner of her eye as though looking for someone else there. You tightened your arms around the bag against your chest, occupying your fingers with the slim beads hanging from one of the pocket tassels. “What? Is there something else I know, too? Just throw it out there to me, might as well at this point.”

Asta smacked her lips together and drew her hands together firmly. “As I’ve- as I’ve said, there are things that I wonder if you’ll be able to understand. Your father was no fool to what dwells in that forest. I believe he actually went deep into the heart of it with an intention and he was noticed.”

“Noticed?” you urged her on. “Noticed by what? A hunter? A ghost? _What_?”

“The Headless Horseman, my dear.” Asta swallowed an exasperated laugh at bewilderment on your face, having expected that much of a reaction from you. “Moorwick, this wonderful town I love, has a very dark history and an even darker legend. The headless horseman who rides atop his alabaster steed, cloaked in crimson without a head.”

She spoke the latter like a nursery rhyme, trailing the tip of her tongue across her lower lip. “He is said to be the warden of the forest, though in life he was a ruthless man- a disgraced prince turned mercenary who lost his life twice. _Twice_.”

You weren’t sure how to interject to this ludicrous story; this old woman was actually trying to tell you that your father had been stolen by a headless horseman in the woods. For you to deplete so much of your time and funds just to hear this- what the hell were you even doing in this town?

Chasing ghosts now, apparently.

Asta didn’t balk at your disbelief, rather she pushed forward with her story. “The first time the horseman lost his life, he was felled and rose again to slaughter the town of Moorwick. The second time, he was decapitated by a sword and buried in a deep grave without his head. And again, he rose from the dead and has waited in the Atticus Forest ever since.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.” Finally, the thoughts in your head aligned with your words. “My dad is dead- dead at worst, missing at best, and you’re telling me a ghost story! _A ghost story_! Asta, what the hell?!”

She remained seated in her lush chair, unperturbed, posture impeccable yet stiff as you sprung up from your own and circled the room, tousling your hair with a hand to quell your nerves- better yet, to keep from agitating a fight with Winston should he overhear the ruckus.

“I told you that what I had to say may not be what you wanted to hear.” She reminded with an edge that stung you with realization you had an outburst as a guest in someone’s home, it flooded your face with hot shame. “Please sit down, drink some tea.”

You didn’t for a long while, instead, you dug a path in the high pile of her carpet, never once straying from the sitting room. When your nerves settled enough to speak without a bite of snark, you returned to your chair with a hard flop. “Okay. So, the headless horseman took my dad. Where would he have been taken?”

Asta blinked once, twice, opening her mouth to cracks and croaks snagging in her throat. She hadn’t anticipated for you to entertain the idea that there was something to what she said. “I- well, yes, he- I suppose he would have been taken into the heart of the forest to the horseman’s grave. At least, that’s what the legend has us believe.”

You juggled her response with a subtle nodding of your head. Clearly, this woman was out of her mind, but it was the only lead you had to go on at this point. Searching a forest was unquestionably stupid, especially without a map, or understanding the layout of the land, yet there lingered a halo of light, a flicker of hope that somewhere in her contrived story some truth rung to it.

“Moorwick has a library, right?” you asked.

She turned her head with a sidelong stare. “Yes. Three branches. The main branch is near town hall.”

Again, the room was plunged into silence while you considered your options from this point forward. You could easily pack your belongings from your father’s home, take everything you saw and high-tail it straight out of this shitstain of a town. You could go back to work at the beginning of next week, block Asta’s phone number and be done with this entire mess.

“Will I assume you’ll be at the library for sometime tomorrow, then?” Asta piped up, leaning forward with a far too curious glimmer in her sunken eyes.

You would have to leave your things as they were in your father’s home for a while, hopefully, they didn’t gather dust with how much still laid there undisturbed in gray blankets.

“Yeah, I’ll be there most of the day.”

You wanted answers, and you weren’t going to leave without them.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You spend a better portion of your day in the archives of the Moorwick Public Library researching the phenomena surrounding the town. By nightfall, you wander into the haunted forest to confront these myths yourself.

First light of dawn seldom chiseled through the fortress of bloated clouds that grew grayer and heavier with the passing hours of the day. The good folk of Moorwick knew better than to stare skyward at that gloom with any sliver of hope that they could feel the warmth on their faces. By this time every year, the general store acclimated to the ineluctable instances of public disgruntlement when the last of their artificial lights were sold, and only in two hours after the shelves were stocked. **  
**

Nigel Basim, general manager of the store, was undecided on whether to handle this as a boon for business, or correct in his desire to share choice words with the family practitioner in town who seemed incapable of prescribing anything other than light therapy and vitamin-d in the size of horse pills. 

On a few occasions, your shopping basket of herb baked crackers and cheap meat cuts went ignored while Nigel burdened you with his ploys for revenge on the doctor, striking you to silence beneath a glare of utter lunacy.

More often than not, you left empty-handed out of desperation to avoid being inadvertently recruited in his devious schemes. And each time, much like today, he followed you no further than the chiming door, barely pushing his head outside into the mist as he called out after you:

“Be careful of the fog, ya? I’ve watched enough movies!” he yelped, slowly shrinking back inside the building with all the smoothness of a serpent. “We’re having a special on orange juice tomorrow, I’ll save you a few!”

Your hand shot up rigidly for him to know you heard, meanwhile your feet carried you down the sidewalk in a trot with old shoes and weak soles that made each footfall a hard quake up your leg. Only once the general store was behind you a few corners, engulfed by the mist did you slow your stride, giving a flustered sigh as you smashed your fists into the pockets on your coat.

One thing about Moorwick that you had climatized to with some reluctance was the sprawl of fog that seemed almost endless. Even at ten in the morning, it still hung in the air as though fresh after a downpour in the hills; blurring the world around you in a sheet of white. You thought it strange that you could hear the clamor of the town around you; the laughter of friends, the hum of engines idling at crosswalks, and shoes scuffing concrete like a match across sandpaper, and yet there was no sun.

You were coaxed from your ruminations once a large building took form from your peripheral; first as a dark gray mass that slowly began to take shape, and then as a towering building of stone with exquisite craftsmanship chiseled into the face of a pair of columns that doubtlessly held the roof aloft. Etched there into a long, overhanging part of the roof was written: Moorwick Public Library, the main branch which Asta had mentioned to you two nights previous.

With a newfound bounce in your step, you withdrew your hands from your pockets and sped up the polished stone slabs that led up to the front doors and out of the mist. It wasn’t until you were inside, scraping your feet against a doormat that you realized how much lighter the air felt inside the library, like the mist had molded itself around you and melted off like a chunk of ice during a thaw.

“Hello!” called a chipper voice from across the room, drawing you towards an older woman with white rings around her eyes and orange leathery skin. “Oh, I think I saw you at Asta’s ceremony the other day, didn’t I? I was in the row behind you the entire time. Oh, oh, and let me just say, I absolutely loved your raincoat. Probably didn’t get it in town, did you?”

You slowly peeled your jacket from your shoulders to drape it across an arm as you approached the woman behind the round desk, offering a tentative smile. “No, got it at a dollar store on my way here. I’ve heard this branch has the archives room, do I have to do anything special to use it?”

A curious glimmer caught her eye from the soft overhead lights, further accentuated by the black kohl that left no part of her lashline uncovered. The creases deepened in her cheeks as her lips twitched high. “Not a thing, dear. Not a thing. But, you’ve done and got me interested why you want to go in there. You’re quite fresh in Moorwick, it’d get anyone to give you a side-eye.”

“I’m just looking into some stuff,” you replied, rolling your shoulders towards your ears. “Can you point me in the direction I need to go?”

Her smile promptly fell as her jaw rolled, unabashed by the disappointment she let show on her face as she handed you a clipboard across the desk. “Furthest door on the right, keep it shut. Just sign your name and you’ll be good to go. Oh, and I’m Molly, head librarian.”

You didn’t commit her name to memory when you turned to weave through the sprawling labyrinth of bookshelves and tall display stands with magazines dating back three years. Her glare burned through the wood, following you with staggering accuracy until you squeezed your way through the narrow doorway into the archives.

There you went undisturbed for the latter part of the morning which gradually spilled into the early afternoon in a drowsy haze, the kind brought on by the malcontent of bad weather. Your eyes often floated away from the spread of newspapers and the glare of the computer screen towards the tops of shelving where beds of dust laid, towards either corner of the room with tables and white chairs tinged yellow. 

From the chair next to you, you heaved a large brown album into your lap, feeling your feet stick deeper into your shoes from the weight of it. It was bound in soft leather that curled at the edges and seemed to crack in some spots, hinting a musty odor as you flung the front cover open and flicked through the laminated pages.

Some of the newspaper articles were too far gone to truly discern; their pages turning gold at the edges which frayed and crisped, others were so worn by damage and time that the black print smeared and faded into a truly unreadable mess. It didn’t thwart your efforts as you continued, observing the dates reverse from where they were nestled in the top right corner of the papers. 

Whether or not you were a part of Moorwick, you were staring at pieces of an extensive history that spanned well into the eighteenth century. Strangely, it was at this point that headlines truly began to reflect the town's troubles with the horseman in the form of sightings of the spectral entity from Atticus, to the heart of the forest near Laslow’s Hollow, and then the swamps and bogs to the east of that. 

You lifted a hand to your mouth, fitting your thumbnail in the groves of your teeth whilst your eyes flitted across the worn print. 

A number of the articles made a mention about how far apart these locations were from one another, considering the Atticus fell into renown for being as untamed as it was one of the largest in the country. And from there, the clippings morphed into obituaries of sorts with a number of townsfolk and travelers alike acknowledged as having disappeared; believed to have met demise at the hands of the horseman. 

There was one in particular that halted your fingertips short of breezing past it, only by the mention of a single child claiming to have seen the horseman while in a group of six. The boy identified himself as Mathias Trilly, and the five others with him: Tobias Stod, Lorei Grimmel, Luric Belk, Nathaniel Gressel, and Mauve Miller, were all felled by a red-cloaked horseman without a head wielding a sword. 

Tobias had given a bewildering answer that day as to how he survived while the others hadn’t. It was simply: “Coins.”

“Ah, the article about Mathias Trilly. I did a report on him once in college,” came the dulcet tones of the mayor’s voice from near your ear. He belted out a laugh that exemplified the emptiness of the room; meanwhile, the large leather album flipped off of your legs into a heap on the ground while you nearly lunged out of your chair. “I”m sorry, I’m sorry! I thought you heard me come in, I called your name a couple of times.”

You spun away from him, sitting forward in your chair towards the computer screen as you raked a hand through your hair to let the nerves ebb. “I must’ve been really into reading. What-what are you doing here anyway? Even for a mayor, you’re scary personable.”

Colson’s glistening teeth showed past his lips stretching thinly over his gums. “I take that as a compliment. Moorwick isn’t so enormous that I wouldn’t be able to take some one-on-one, heart-to-heart chats every now and then.”

“Oh, yeah, I guess,” you replied absently, eyes floating towards the archives doorway which was now barely ajar. “How did you know I was in here?”

He took a moment to respond by bringing the raised rim of his coffee to his lips and hooked a foot around a nearby chair, dragging it close to you before spinning it around and straddling it. “Oh, that? Well, I was returning a few things when Molly stopped me. She was telling me about a newcomer who looked ‘particularly on a mission and stormed into the archives’. I figured it had to be you.”

You were almost offended by Molly. “Don’t get new people in town much, then?”

“Not as often as you think,” Colson replied, glancing towards the computer screen that boasted the official website for Moorwick and wagged a single finger at it. “Taking some time to learn about the town? I’m pleased to see it. We tried to make the website as comprehensive as possible without overloading people. Moorwick is her history, after all.”

He noticed your silence and set aside his coffee, draping his arms across the back of the chair. “Don’t worry, I know you’re not actually interested in that. You want to know about the horseman, right?”

Your head whirled towards him, “Can you tell me anything different than I already know?”

“Maybe,” he answered, tunefully. “Guess it just depends on who’s said what to you already. I’ve already got a hunch, though.”

Your fingers itched for paper and pen, for the phone you had nestled away in the pocket of your coat across the room on the hanging rack. Anything to create a physical record of what the mayor had to say about the legend, anything to be able to unearth information about the whereabouts, or worst case, the fate your father succumbed to. 

“Most of the newspapers we have archived about the horseman are more missing person cases than they are actual sightings. To my knowledge, I’d say a good eighty percent of everything we’ve managed to find and recover are just hoaxes.” Colson plucked at the wool of his peacoat, flicking off hairs from his fingertips every so often. “That’s one of the reasons why I mentioned Mathias Tilly, of the thousands we have, his is one of the few that actually has credibility to it.”

“Because he made it out alive?” you pressed.

“There is that, of course, but there were reports filed in response to the case of the missing children that proved that he and the others were spotted wandering into the forest.” He paused for a moment, tracing the shape of his chin carefully. “The only thing is that Mathias was a child, and children often take things at face value.”

You had your chair facing him now, an elbow settled on the computer desk while your palm nested your jaw. “If you don’t think it was the horseman, do you think that that maybe there’s a more human occurrence behind all of the disappearances?”

“For some? Oh, absolutely. Most definitely. I think what scares people the most is that these missing persons cases have been ongoing for centuries, consistently. It scares people because when you think of it logically, either there’s something that’s been in that forest all this time, or there’s been generations of people playing copycat. Spooky, right?”

To that, you couldn’t find the right words to give a reply. It was an angle you had considered before, certainly, but not to such an extent that he had explained to you. The thought of a lineage of people taking on the identity of a legendary entity for something so heinous sent a chill rattling down your spine.

Colson watched you with an eager interest that flooded your neck and face with warmth, an intensity that you still could not find a way to describe any other way than odd. “Ah, actually, we had a case of a copycat horseman pretty recently. Well, supposed copycat, anyway. The mayor back then never found anyone to take responsibility for the folks who went missing.”

“How recent was this?” you tried fixing your posture to ease the discomfort.

“Started back in nineteen sixty-five, concluded nineteen seventy-five.” He ducked his head towards a bent finger to scratch his cheek. “I know more about the old cases than the new ones, honestly. Bunch of college kids got it in their heads to party in the Atticus one night, never came back out. About a year later, two women went missing; a year after that, three kids. The list goes on.”

You were reluctant. “What about you, Colson? Have you ever seen the horseman?”

He gave a deep rumble from his throat, his chest jumping a few times as an affable smile etched lines into his mouth. “Yeah, of course. I’ve met the horseman last year and the year before that. Last year, the horseman was Mausi Lipton, before that it was Bradwick Lork, and two years before that it was Sasha Tolmy and Kenneth Brown.”

“Ah,” your expression flattened in clear disappointment. “You’re talking about that parade that’s happening in two days, right?”

Colson seemed wholly disinterested in his coffee as he swirled it around by an extended arm, his stare continually unrelenting. “Can you believe it? You’ve been here over a week already, and I’m glad you came when you did so you can see the parade. It was the last mayor’s idea, really. He thought the horseman needed a more positive, family-fun image. Something to give the folks to look forward to. He started it right around the end of nineteen seventy-five.”

“When the disappearances stopped?” 

“Yes, when they stopped,” he said with a shift in his chair. “The last mayor wanted to distract from the hysteria as much as he could, so he made the horseman into, well, a novelty of sorts. A fun little joke. It was a brilliant idea at the time, and now it’s grown into what it has.”

The words that jumped on your tongue were pleasantries and calling the parade a nice thing, yet they stirred behind clenched teeth when the door to the archives creaked open. Winston shuffled inside with a cane of twisted ebony, a thick wool jacket, and a lopsided smile that wore deeply into his cheek.

Colson tilted his head and mumbled under his breath.

“Ah, Colson, the parade is a little more important than just a novelty,” he said, halting before the pair of you with both trembling hands crossed around the brass knob atop the cane. “It gave the people of Moorwick a way to confront what scared them. Having a ceremony to unmask the horseman brought him down to a more human level than as some untouchable killer or myth. Never forget that, my boy.”

The agitation in Colson’s breathy sigh was irrefutable, marked by a frown pressing hard on his face as he sluggishly rose from the chair, nudging it around to face the table. “Two times in a week, this is a rarity, Winston. You came at a good time though, I was just on my way out.”

Your eyebrows arched a little. He sure didn’t seem that way while he was talking to you. There was obviously something awry with their relationship, but you bit your tongue and kept your nose down.

“Ah, good, good,” Winston coughed out, holding a handkerchief to his mouth. “That lad you have run errands for you is out in the lobby. He followed me in, you know? Molly then got her claws into us and, ah, guided us through her assumptions of why the mayor and a newcomer were together in the archives.”

“Anything to help pass her day quicker, right?” Colson gave another sigh, this time it hissed through his teeth as he fixed his long coat. When he turned towards you, your shoulders leaped higher as though surprised to be under his eye again, and they stiffened when he gave one a hearty pat. “Well, my coffee is cold now, so I’d better head out. The next time we talk, it should be over lunch.”

You edged your gaze away from him, suddenly very aware of the groan your chair made when you moved and coaxed a weighty smile that pulled your lips far too thin. “I’ll be in town for a while, don’t rush your calendar free.”

Much like on that dreary day when he had introduced himself, he left you and Winston then with a mysterious, and vaguely strange air that seemed to emanate from him like an aura. You waited until he was out of the room and hearing an earful from his errand boy in the lobby before speaking to Winston.

“Does he get less weird over time, or-”

“No, no, that’s just him,” Winston drew out a white cloth from the pocket of his jacket, lightly brushing your shoulder where the mayor had touched. “You just learn to deal with it. Hm, you may want to sanitize your shoulder, just in case.”

A huff of air rushed out your nostrils, and then an airy laugh.

Winston was mostly toothless, having only his bottom row of teeth to show you when he grinned splendidly. “There it is! A smile and a laugh, I don’t think either has come from you Hm, but these old eyes and ears don’t work like they used to.”

Your laughter softened quickly as a new thought struck you. “Did Asta tell you I was here?”

His voice deadened to a cluster of grumbles and large breaths that rumbled in his throat, perhaps disheartened by the sudden shift of the discussion. “Hm, yes, I suppose she did. You’re all she really likes to talk about right now, but I came this way myself to check in on you. We’re both a little worried, you see.”

This grabbed your attention unlike anything else today. “What? What have I done since coming to Moorwick that would worry you guys?”

Winston’s jaw fell agape as he swept a hand across his mouth and chin, pale eyes aflutter about room as though he were about to divulge a great secret to someone not needing to know it. You had grown familiar with this place’s reluctance to speak on just about anything, though Asta and Winston seemed among the few willing to keep you out of the dark. 

“Honestly, Asta and I were speaking about it over our afternoon brunch, you see,” he began with a little quiver in his throat. “Your father- your father was much the same. He was inquisitive, so much so that he spent more time in this library than he did at home. He wasn’t the type to let things be as they were.”

“Yeah, Asta mentioned he got a little too attached to the horseman myth.” Your arms pressed snug against your chest. “I get you’re trying to say that you think he and I are the same, but–”

“Listen here, listen here!” Winston raised his voice until it croaked, prompting him to flick out his handkerchief to cover a cough. “After all that time in the library, he was hellbent on digging deeper and went into that forest. He never came out.”

You jutted your lips, rolling your tongue across your top teeth as your feet paced in one spot. “Have you ever considered that he just ran away? Maybe-maybe he went into the forest to escape this place, too? Maybe he was kidnapped. Maybe he’s actually still there. You don’t know, Asta doesn’t know, I don’t- I don’t know.”

Winston nodded fast in small motions as he lowered his head and bleary eyes from the ferocity of yours, mouth in a firm line. “I won’t ask you to believe in something that you don’t, and don’t utter a word of this back to Asta, but there’s something in the Atticus. Myth or man, maybe neither; perhaps both, but don’t try to find the answers that no one else has been able to find. It isn’t worth it.”

He limped closer then with his cane cracking at the floor with his strides, one hand coming to rest on your forearm, giving a delicate squeeze, undoubtedly what he could muster. “Swear to me, keep your interests in this room and only this room.”

Behind his thick-rimmed glasses was an earnest stare that made your heart sting and shrivels deep in your chest. He pleaded to you through the bite of tears that sat on his lashes, and blotchy red skin. It made you wonder why this was something he cared so deeply for, why he cared so deeply for you.

Your chest raised high, slowly lowering with a quiet whistle through your teeth. You smiled at him with some regret to your next words, “Of course, Winston. I’ll find out what I need to without putting myself in harm’s way.”

It was that very same guilt that followed you home that night, prickling at the back of your neck like needles as you swung a knapsack across your shoulders and tested the batteries in a flashlight that set the flow aglow. There was an anxiety that welled in your chest and set the old house alive with the floorboards moaning under your feet while you paced the floor. 

You found that you would not miss being in that house, even though it still rested there on the outskirts of town on its own most days.

The door responded to your intentions with a shrill creak as you yanked it shut and toed the key beneath the damp doormat with your boot before continuing off the patio. You had been careful wandering around town the rest of the day; your encounters with Molly, Colson, and Winston had left you on edge, it willed thoughts into your mind that you were being watched.

So, it wasn’t until the final indication of day had at once plunged Moorwick into impregnable darkness that you chose to make your way along the outer parts of it. You stayed near enough to the buildings to hide against the walls or in the dank alleys, yet far enough that anyone sparing a peek out their window would think you a trick of shadow or mist.

Once again, the town suffered a drizzle similar to what you had grown to know well, despised that you had learned to take in stride and opted to carry a coat or umbrella on your person. With that rain came the tendrils of mist that melded into an impenetrable wall you thought you could actually touch, feel dampen your skin, and sit on your shoulders.

You were guided alongside town by the dim, artificial light leaving thick streams of orange in the moist, green grass from the buildings and homes you prowled by. By the time you reached the last of the light, you felt a chill creep through the rubber soles on your boots numb your toes, your knees from the wet ground, and the rest of you when the Atticus appeared before you like a specter.

It was there, colossal and ancient and infinite with a depth of blackness to it that made its silhouette startlingly easy to notice through the dark night and mist. You felt no less averted by it than you did the town itself, though a sharp, quivering breath still managed to send coils of white into the air.

“God, why am I even doing this?” you groused, speaking to everything around you. 

You heard the locusts, crickets, and frogs orchestrate a response simultaneously beautiful and uncomfortable. Their mirthful chirps and cries surrounded you, growing with such presence and intensity the closer you drew to the forest that you had the mind to box off your ears.

Just when the towering trees began to take shape, the silhouette of their straight, crooked, and gnarled trunks a distinct sight, a bright flash of light swinging from overhead sent you diving for the ground, pressing yourself as low to the grass as you could without drenching your clothes.

You crawled forward on your arms and knees, poking your head high enough to catch sight of the spotlight whipping around through the air wildly, moving languidly with the strides of a man holding it. Moments later, you noticed two more lights flitting around; both inconveniently close to the marked entrance of the Atticus. 

It didn’t take much effort to catch a glimpse of the cars backed from tail-to-tail in the road nearing the gaping mouth of the forest, clearly meant to deter anyone from edging any closer. Your stomach gave a fretful twist whilst you dug your forehead into your arms, cursing under your breath.

_Police._ This town had fucking police blocking further passage in. 

You weren’t entirely sure why this was taking you by surprise. Moorwick wasn’t a huge town, but enough of one where it having its own rural station made sense; the history of folks vanishing in the woods made it even more reasonable. And yet, you hadn’t noticed a single one of them patrolling the streets, nor the whereabouts of a police station in any part of the town you’d seen until that point.

_‘Okay, okay, so how far out do they go?’_ The reality was that they didn’t wander too far from the squad cars or one another. You assumed it was part of their procedures, though it struck you that they were as afraid of being near that forest as everyone else. _‘They’re barely going ten feet away from the cars, it’s like they’re just ready to book it the fuck out of there.’_

Holding a breath, you crawled to the east and away from the wide maw of husky trunks and spindly branches. You gradually climbed to your feet once you were close enough to a tree to swerve behind it and out of sight of a light that zipped through the splintered trunk.

You threaded your fingers through the straps on your bag, held tight, and broke into a sprint deeper into the forest. The ground was soft under your feet, suctioning you down inches into mud and rainwater that kicked up high, and splattered a mess on your clothes. 

This didn’t stop you from charging on like prey in flight, for that’s certainly how you felt with trees hanging overhead with twisted limbs forming a cage, and the terrible night that could swallow you whole.

The sky gave a great bellow as a gust of air serpentined through the forest, breathing life into the trees as the leaves far above you rattled frantically, skittered away below you. Even as your legs began to finally tire, chest ensnared by a tight burning in your lungs that slithered up your throat and made the saliva bleed from the corner of your mouth, the wind kept against your back- pushing you deeper.

You gulped greedy gasps of air, reaching for the trunk of hold your weight and waited a minute or two before you could straighten your back and note the fact that the wind had all but dissipated. 

Once again, you were left among the impervious mist and void of darkness that even your flashlight could not reach but a few feet away. You were abandoned to the swell of crickets and shrieks of crows, while the sounds of debris and brittle branches snapping made you pray they came from underfoot.

For a moment, you twisted yourself in a full circle, allowing your hand to guide the light with you when a far more troubling realization plunged your heart into your stomach.

You didn’t know where you were. 

There were no spotlights outside of the forest, better yet, there was no edge of the forest anywhere you could see. These trees were hardly the same as the ones you had first approached; tall and sturdy, yet their girth and height were nothing on the ones that loomed over you now. They were massive and old, lightly bending to the rushes of air that did not reach your face.

“Alright,” you blew out in a huge puff of breath. “I just need to go back the exact way that I came and keep going. Eventually, I’ll get back out.”

Your first steps forward immediately ceased into a halt when the white fog in your path began shift and writhe, shriveling away from you as though creating a way for you all its own. And then you heard a sound so distant, you at first thought it was your ears playing tricks on you. It was thunder fast approaching, a rhythmic beat that pounded into the ground and a fierce snort that echoed through the trees.

It was an innate reaction that drove you to leap behind a tree, killing the flashlight to immerse yourself in complete darkness for the first time since entering the forest. You kept your back flush to the trunk, cautiously edging a look around it towards the direction you had heard the noise, and where it faded; dissolved into thin air like the fog. 

The moments passed and nothing changed, yet you were hardly able to convince yourself to move from the cover of the tree. Your fingertips pressed hard into the coarse bark, once again peeking across either side for a silhouette, a shadow- anything at all.

You tested your courage then, stomping a foot into the soggy ground with a whimper before flipping on the light quickly roving the area with it. Just as before, it was eerily still; unbothered by foraging creatures, and even the calls of birds and songs of insects had stopped as though frightened into silence. 

And then, you heard it. The rustle of leaves that narrowed closer to you, propelling your hand ahead towards the noise. 

The broad scope of your light caught the hooves, legs, and broad chest of a large horse such a shade of pristine white it was haunting to look at. Your grasp on the flashlight loosened as did your jaw when the horse dipped its head low, staring at you with hollow sockets and shredded cheeks of flesh and blood that gave sight of its teeth gnawing on the bit in its mouth.

Slowly then, you raised the light higher, unable to ease the way your hand trembled and breath shook when a man clad in dulled black armor took shape atop the great horse. The air in your throat grew thinner until you realized you weren’t breathing; your light reaching his neck where a tattered red cloak was fastened beneath his armor, and where nothing else remained above his high collar.

You heard your heart hammering in your ears and thrust hard against your ribs as you sidled away from the tree and surged forward in the opposite direction you had come. If his presence wasn’t enough to send you into hysterics, it was the pale gourd cradled against one arm and the glint of a long blade hanging low from his other hand.

The dead beast he rode gave a horrifically piercing scream, large feet kicking up chunks of mud earth as the horseman spurred it on after you, hoisting the sword far overhead.

_‘Oh- oh my god. Holy shit, oh my god!’ _Your chest still ached from your arduous run earlier, though it was such an inconsequential thing at the moment as you dug your heels into the ground, swiveling around to lunge behind another tree just as the air cut with a harsh swish just below your head.

He only just missed you. He was actually trying to kill you.

Just ahead, the horseman yanked at reins to whirl his steed around, urging it on once again in the chase as you ran away from the cover of the tree, deeper and deeper into the unknown. You could hear nothing apart from the drum of the horses’ hooves striking powerfully and fast, and your own pants that had morphed into cries for help.

The thick wall of mist recoiled as you ran, clearing the air just enough for your light to show you what was ahead, and behind with the horseman gaining on you quick. Your thoughts whorled into a mass of incoherence, adrenaline gorged your veins as the only thing keeping your body moving at this point.

So, when you noticed a slab of stone and sediment overhanging a ravine that plummeted into nothing for as far as you could see, you cut the light and prayed the rest of your way through the trees towards it. The undead beast gave yet another hellish screech, fussing far enough way for you to know that it could no longer follow you through the thicket.

Your back smashed against cold, damp stone as you drew your legs close together as though to fuse yourself into a small ball. There you waited in severe silence, heavy breaths stifled by the layers you wore on your hands. 

The horse made no noise now, tempting you to take a glance around the stone cliff but you knew better than to take that risk of curiosity. It was obvious enough that the horseman hadn’t ridden off, nor lost interest in this hunt. If he was anything like the one you had learned about, he would be after you until he could take your head, or you dropped dead from exhaustion.

From overhead on the face of the stone slab, there came the clink of the horseman’s spurs announcing his presence. His footfalls were long and languid as his boots scuffed across the rugged stone, kicking pebbles and debris from the top of it. You pressed your hands against your mouth harder, finding it difficult to swallow back the fear in your throat.

For a while, he paced the top of the stone as though he were actually trying to get a view of what lurked at the bottom of the ravine. The idea jumped at you to take this chance to run again, eventually, he could find you under the rock, and he wasn’t on his horse. Surely you could outrun a dead man in light armor.

Just as you moved a foot forward, dragging it gently across the wet ground to ready yourself back into a sprint, the horseman moved several wide strides towards the edge of the cliff and thrust an axe into the stone so hard, with such power that sparks lit before your eyes and and the malodor of smoke wafted under your nose.

You screamed out in surprise, bolting from under your cover just as the horseman wrenched his ax free from the stone and dropped off the edge like an anvil, landing on his feet without so much as a flinch. As you pointed the bouncing light back towards him, he was quite far behind but followed briskly with an ax brandished in one hand, the other wound the handle of a whip of human vertebrae.

The world was beginning to spin around you, everything looked the same no matter the direction you went. Every tree loomed above you some cruel, quiet amusement while the mist receded and danced away from you as though sentient. 

You weren’t willing to surrender yourself to a fate like this.

Tracing your tongue across your lower lip, you hopped in place for a moment, flicking your flashlight towards the trees in search of one branch that would be enough for your idea. You found what you needed near the base of a knobby tree with low lying branches frail enough for you to bend tightly, but not so much that it would break under the pressure.

“Come on, bastard!” you shouted indignantly into the void, using all the weight in your body to hold the branch in place. “Come get me! I’m right here!”

The horseman appeared then as you thought he would, dauntless strides carried him near to where you were shielded by the gnarly tree trunk. You waited in complete darkness, ears now attuned to the rattle of his spurs, and boots trampling the wet ground. 

You waited, waited, and waited until he was just there crossing the threshold of your trap when you released the branch, sending it swinging around with such velocity that when it struck the horseman in the chest, it was enough to knock him back to the ground a good couple of feet. The light illuminated his body when you approached, shuffling your feet forward only inches at a time to where he was sprawled.

Every instinct told you to turn tail, this would be the only opportunity you would get. The hair on your arms and neck bristled, standing high when you focused the intensity of your light on the dark hole in the collar of his coat. 

There was nothing attached on the inside, nor the deceit of the top of a human’s head hidden in a costume. It was cauterized, blackened flesh that tinged red in spots, emanating a dark vapor of some sort.

“You’re real- shit, you’re real.” One of your hands shot up into your hair, mussing it as you backed away from the horseman’s body, restraining bubbles of laughter that swelled in your throat. “I- I gotta get out of here, out of this town.”

It was a humble wish that dissolved from your mind when you felt leather-clad fingers grapple your ankle, yanking your weight out from under you. Before your back even struck the ground, the horseman was already staggering to his feet with the help of the ax that he then swung high above, sawing the air to your neck.

You forced your body out of the way of that path just in time, bracing yourself upright with your elbows as you pushed yourself back. The horseman wedged the ax free from muddy earth and slid his hand along the handle to the shoulder. 

He trudged over, legs on either side of you as a frantic yelp ripped from your throat when he took a fistful of your hair at the scalp and forced your neck straight.

“Wait, wait!” you croaked out, he lifted the ax. “I can- I can help you find your head! I can get your head back!”

The curved blade whistled through the air, halting just shy of your flesh. You felt it lightly scrape against your skin when you swallowed, and willed the strength in your limbs to raise the flashlight to the horseman’s torso. He remained that way with the ax against your throat, though he made no other motions otherwise. 

Your voice tumbled from your lips, “I can- I can help you get it. That’s what you want, right? Your head back? I’ll make- make you a bargain. Help me find someone, and in return, I’ll bring you your head with my own hands.”

Again, he did not move, and you wondered if this time he was contemplating whether it was something he wanted to do- or if he could even think at all. The silence began to devour your mind in anxiety worse than the threat of death, but soon you were dropped back to the forest floor and the horseman withdrew his ax with surprising fluidity. 

Your scalp throbbed, stung when you touched where he held you, though you were grateful you could even do such a thing.

The horseman tucked his ax away against his back before bending down for you, his fist dug into the front of your jacket, hauling you to your feet with some inches to spare between the tips of your toes and the ground. You were almost in a panic again, hands gripping the thick fabric around his wrist, only lessening your hold once he freed you first.

“Ho- Okay. _Alright_,” you rasped, taking broad steps away from the slither of space between your chests. You weren’t sure what to say at this point that wasn’t a reflection of the cluttered thoughts ricocheting in your head; meanwhile, the horseman merely stood there as least menacing he had been the entire night. “I want to go home, can you get me out of the forest?”

Prompted by your words, he thrust an arm out towards you, once again diminishing the space between your bodies. You smothered a startled cry in the back of your throat, pulling your lips taut as you slowly edged a hand closer to his. He reached past your hand, gripping at your elbow firmly to which you did as well until you felt him spin you around, and shove you forward.

The wind and fog roused surged you again, cooling the around your brow and the back of your neck. 

By the time you collected yourself and rolled your shoulders back, the forest around you was still once more, and in the near distance you saw the edge of the forest, the police’s spotlights floating about, and the dim lights of the town of Moorwick ominously inviting you back home.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the town of Moorwick abuzz for the parade, you make every effort to escape your pact with the horseman, only to be thwarted by suspicious circumstances. When you’re lured back to the Atticus, your next encounter with the horseman is anything but pleasant

By mid-afternoon of October 31st, the very gray and heavy veil of fog lifted off the town of Moorwick as a specter might its haunt. It had been the first time since the awards ceremony that you had seen it with this much clarity, as well as ecstatic bustle. Raincoats of rich hue bounced in your vision, they were an uncomfortable strain on your eyes compared to the dismal slabs of concrete and blacktop that lined the sidewalks and streets.**  
**

The clouds were bloated low over the town still, seeming to come nearer with each passing day. Although you knew it wasn’t the case, you were convinced at times that the clouds were waiting for the moment to crush the town beneath some great weight. The thought made you wither against the cold patter of rain on your coat.

Even without the fog, the rain had proven to be ceaseless and encompassing. You had been packing your car with the last of your luggage for the trip back across the country when the radio blasted the newest weather announcement, and the report of a number of blockades made erect on the major roads due to landslides. It hadn’t thwarted your efforts to floor the gas pedal and leave Moorwick behind as an awful fever dream.

In truth, you had been hauling suitcases into your car since that night in the forest, since striking a bargain with a creature straight from ghost stories. That encounter had done something to you; chilled you in such a way that you felt ice ensnare your bones, stiffening your limbs until you couldn’t move. So, you had sat on the old floorboards in your father’s house, still until the early hours of dawn came indicated to you from the alarm on your phone startling you out of your stupor.

This wasn’t a situation of questioning your sanity; you knew what you saw, knew what you experienced. Your scalp still ached from where he had held you up by your hair, and the hard grip of his hand on your arm seared an imprint in your mind, making your hair bristle. 

You were afraid of the promises you made to the horseman and what it meant. This wasn’t what you had anticipated to find while searching for the whereabouts of your father; the stories should have just been stories, the sighting should have been hoaxes, and now that you knew that they weren’t- did that mean that the horseman felled your father in the same way he had tried to you?

Had you made a pact with a monster?

So, that afternoon, you drove away from Moorwick as fast as you could in the downpour that blanketed your windshield in thick sheets that your wipers barely powered through. You wrapped the tall peaks of stone, tree, and grass almost too close to the edge at times, and took the sprawling stretches of road with a roaring engine. 

You had managed twenty miles before really having to search the floor for the brakes; less because of the worsening weather, and more from the barricade ahead made of four black cruisers sitting tail-to-tail in the middle of the road, lights glaring off your windshield and bending in weird shapes from the rainwater draining down the glass. 

The man to approach your vehicle tapped lightly on your window with the butt of his flashlight. You barely cracked your window. “You’re coming from Moorwick, right? Best be turning around. Roads around here are closed ‘til the rain passes.”

“Isn’t there some road I can take to get back east?” you asked, flinging your head back against the seat with a sigh. “I’m just trying to get out of the area, I’ll stop for a few days at the inns in the next town if I have to.”

He traced the inside of his mouth across the ridges of his lower teeth, seeming to restrain a derisive smile. “Sure in a hurry to get out, huh? Don’t blame you. Moorwick’s a strange little town, but unfortunately, that’s your nearest town with an inn for about sixty miles.”

“Oh, come on,” you breathed in exasperation, sending air gushing through your teeth. “The landslides can’t be that bad. If I just drive slow, I can probably get through.”

This time, he swallowed a scoff in his throat as he dragged the knuckle of his thumb across his forehead. “Some guy had the same idea, ten miles up ahead, deadass got swept right off the road like nothing by a mudslide. They’re fast-moving, you don’t expect them.”

You tightened your fingers around the steering wheel, feeling your gaze withering from his. “God, is that guy alright?”

“Dunno. His car got swept off the road, broke the barrier, and dropped off into the Atticus somewhere.” He paused, flinching one side of his face as though realizing he said something he shouldn’t have. “Since he went off into the Atticus, we assume the worst.”

You simply stared ahead at the rain pelting down on your windshield. “Is anyone going to search in there for him?”

Predictably, you weren’t given a reply to that. He scratched the scruff on his chin before pushing the rim of his hat lower across his face to thwart the rain. “Listen, just turn back around. This storm is moving east as it is, you’re not gonna have this problem in Moorwick.”

There was a heaviness weighing in your chest on your trip back into town. You felt your unsmiling lips tugging lower as the downpour tapered into a gentle drizzle, sending your wipers dragging across the windshield in a harsh groan. 

You knew that the man who had been carried off the road had either died upon impact, and if he didn’t, he would surely meet his demise in a worse way. There was no doubt in your mind that the horseman had been responsible for the disappearances in the forest; yet, eerily, you had to wonder if there was something else that lurked in the fog and winding thickets of the Atticus. 

With how quickly the horseman had accepted the bargain, surely you hadn’t been the first to try. It didn’t make sense that none of them had pleaded for their lives as you had. Or, perhaps they had tried to beg for mercy, but only as far as that.

By evening, the streets of Moorwick were illuminated so brightly that nary a slither of darkness reached from beyond the narrow alleyways between buildings. Hanging lanterns were strung across the awnings of businesses and wrapped around lamp posts, glowing faint shades of orange and red. High towers of hay had dulled from their golden sheen from the rain, while large pumpkins sat at their peaks with sinister smiles and triangular eyes. 

The sight of the streets reminded you much of a county fair all with the hastily soldered booths and thick, plastic sheets with product and prices stretched across the front. It was remarkable considering only hours prior, you had only seen all of these sheets of metal, wood, poles, and plastic on the ground while folks bickered in their disagreements of placement and angle.

Now their faces glowed in delight as they beckoned you with their wrists and hands, coaxed you closer with their sickly sweet-smelling treats, and knick-knacks that glittered like gold. You had wrenched your eyes away from a few before you could have been noticed, shrinking deeper in your raincoat as you shouldered through the crowd until you were behind the booths and out of the fray.

You were quick to push open a door below a striped awning of delicate pink and white, yanking the hood off your head once inside. The bell overhead gave a silvery peal while you scuffed your feet along the doormat, strong notes of vanilla and rose wafted in your nostrils.

“Where have you been all day? I dropped by your place and you weren’t home,” called a tuneful voice from across the store. You only paid a glance towards the tall woman with deep skin once you had your raincoat hanging by hook and you were nestled in a seat at the counter. “Seriously, this town goes absolutely insane on Halloween. I’ve never seen the like anywhere else.”

“They didn’t even have the booths up earlier before I left,” you nodded in agreement with her, rubbing your palms along your thighs. “How have you managed to live here for fifteen years?”

Her lips stretched to show a mesmerizing smile. “Easy. You just gotta pretend you know what they know. Folks here aren’t any smarter, any dumber than anywhere else. If nothing else, they’re easier to fool because no one talks about anything that matters.”

“Yeah, I get you.” You, in fact, did not get her. “Isn’t that big parade today, too? The horseman one? Oh, gimme a sample of today’s blend.”

“Do you one better, I’ll give you a large.” With a wink, she turned away from you to grab a mug off the top shelf and began filling it from the thermos she had on display. “Yeah, the parade has been a big deal even before I came to Moorwick. It has a lot to do with the disappearances of all those people back in the sixties.”

You reached for a couple of sugar packets in front of you, giving them a hard whack on the table. “Yeah. The old mayor put it into place to deal with the hysteria.”

“Oh,” she gave a suggestive grin, tucking her chin close against her neck. “You’ve been talking with Colson. That man would probably flip the entire town if you asked him to.”

“God, Nellie, don’t say that.” You flicked your eyes away from her, rolling your shoulders as the seat groaned under you. “He only told me that stuff because he’s just trying to do his job. Make Moorwick profitable, y’know?”

Nellie was careful with the mug as she lowered it down for you, dipping a spoon into it afterward. “Okay, whatever you want to believe. Anyway, today’s tea is something I got imported. Very fragrant, very strong. Not for the weak.”

“Are you trying to say something?” you asked, giving her an oblique stare as you forcefully ripped three more packets of sweetener. 

“Hmm, not at all. Oh, right, listen to this,” Nellie bent forward on the counter, arms crossed under her to keep upright. “So, the sheriff comes in this morning with a few of his lackeys, right? I give them their coffee like I always do, and I’m hearing them talk about someone coming out of the Atticus the other night.”

You weren’t sure if you sputtered on the tea from the astringency, or from being startled at her words. Slowly, you lowered the mug back to the counter, tracing a fingertip across your scorched lip. “So-someone came out? They saw someone?”

“Yeah, apparently it gave a few of the deputies and rookies a fright.” She switched to perching her chin on the ball of her hand, eyes glittering with intrigue as she gauged your reactions. “They don’t have the manpower to bring anyone else out there, especially since they’re monitoring the parade- but, I guess it’s a big deal. Probably because you never really hear anything about people coming out.”

“Do-do they have any leads on who it might have been?” 

Nellie’s dark eyes were as captivating as her smile. It wasn’t often someone on the receiving end of her stare could easily look away. “Someone out of their damn mind.”

For a while, you said nothing else. You knew that she had no reliable information to accuse you, and even if she had, it wasn’t her style to wrestle information out of folks. Nellie’s specialty was gathering information effortlessly and gracefully; there was something in her demeanor; her posture, her smile that lured people into offering it to her. She had a way of ebbing wariness off of tense shoulders, weaseling out anything she wanted to know with a couple of words and a few nice smiles.

It made her particularly challenging to lie, if not for the fact that her eyes would drill into your head and wrench it out, but she had sources dotted around Moorwick ready to let their jowls flap at any moment.

You dragged your top row of teeth across your lip. “I’ve been thinking a lot… about Colson.”

“I know you have–”

“Shut up,” you whined, lightly swatting her arm with the back of your hand. “No, listen, seriously. You know the guy way better than I do, when he was talking to me, I was just wondering how someone like him became a mayor.”

Nellie’s face weighed down in disappointment. “Clearly the fishery, duh.”

“Fishery?” you arched both brows. “There’s a fishery?”

“How did you not know that? Moorwick’s entire economy basically revolves around the fishery. There’s the Atticus, sure, but no one can touch the forest,” Nellie came around the counter as she spoke, taking a seat on the stool next to you. “Moorwick sits on the coastline, but you knew that already.”

“Yeah,” you said. You honestly didn’t.

“Well, I guess Moorwick runs wild and farmed ones, but that’s not the juicy bit. One guy started it all, settled down in quaint, little Moorwick and had a family.” Nellie had a beaming smile again, this one in restrained anticipation. “You know what I’m getting at. Sinclair Fisheries is the name, and guess who’s daddy sits in the CEO’s seat?”

“No way,” you belted out a laugh, upsetting your mug with a hollow rattle as you slapped your hand on the counter. “I didn’t think Colson’s dad was the town’s bigwig.”

“Oh, it gets better,” Nellie trailed the tip her red nail under her lip as she leaned forward. “Apparently, the popular vote should have gone to the former mayor, but it didn’t go that way. When dad found out that the son was running for office, isn’t it just… _shocking_ that the important votes suddenly flipped in son’s favor?”

As bizarre as Colson was, he had shown you nothing short of impeccable hospitality since coming to Moorwick. It was difficult to imagine he would have accepted buying votes with a good conscience, much less allowing his father to do so for him. The entire discussion made your skin crawl and set your eyes fluttering around the shop.

“It’s all rumor, though,” Nellie’s voice had an optimistic trill as she spoke, willing pitying smile onto her face. “We should try to catch the tail end of the unmasking. Me, Nigel, and Winston have a huge jackpot going this year on who got it. I’ve been right for six years and running.”

In the grand scheme of everything else happening around you, you had mostly forgotten the significance of the parade to unmask the horseman. Admittedly, there was some prickle of curiosity that coaxed you into tailing outside after Nellie, flipping the hood of your raincoat over your head while she secured the door, and gave the knob a jiggle.

You had known her all but a short two weeks at this point, but you were grateful to the instantaneous rapport had forged between you both in that time. In a way, your loneliness and displacement in Moorwick had given way to your friendship as Nellie felt the same. After fifteen years of citizenship in this town haunted by a somber sky, towering forest, and ominous legends, she confessed she still felt out of place. The only true people of Moorwick were those who had been born there; anyone else is, and would forever be outsiders meant to suffer scrutiny.

She had mentioned something curious to you once, that the former mayor had no previous ties to the town with the exception of marriage. In a fashion quite familiar to her, when you asked if it someone you knew, she wagged a thin finger in front of her face and said for you to put two-and-two together.

“I just remembered something,” Nellie mused, popping her umbrella open once the chill of the rain became too much for her. The thin fabric cut through the air, sprawling wide like the wingspan of a bat. Her leisurely strides eventually changed to match your gait as she sidled closer, arms barely scuffing with the umbrella held aloft between you. “Earlier, you said that you left. You’re here now so you couldn’t get through, right?”

You rolled your tongue around against your cheeks, considering whether you wanted to tell her that you tried to leave town, and the reason for it. There was a part of you that teetered the idea of explaining everything to her, to have someone to share in this absurdity that you were experiencing at the price of losing the only friend you had in this town. That was enough to stifle the urge to let the words flow out, muscling a strained smile and a shrug.

“I’ve never been in a place so prone to landslides,” you said, eyes transfixed ahead on a child in a red raincoat to avoid the insistent stare searing into your head. “They had the roads blocked off for sixty miles.”

Nellie let you be with those remarks, gaze withering away from you and forward towards the road that began to change. The rugged concrete and asphalt that burdened the weight of Moorwick’s restless residents had suddenly turned to polished stone that felt hard under your feet, sending vibrations rattling up your legs, and fill your ears with an incessant tap of heels as folks funneled into the town square.

Unlike the first time you had been there next to the town hall for Asta’s ceremony, visible among all prying eyes, you were well concealed towards the back with Nellie. Her umbrella had collapsed and was now tucked snugly under an arm as she stretched her neck far in an attempt to sift through the blithering sea of bright raincoats. You did much the same, pulling the hood away from your eyes to get a better look towards the front.

It was the head of an enormous ebony steed that caught your eye, prompting you to smack at Nellie’s arm wildly. She narrowed the proximity between you both, pressing her cheek flush to yours while you both gawked at the horse, though more specifically, the headless figure sitting atop of it,

You felt your breath seize in your chest for a moment, reliving the rush of adrenaline in your veins that made your blood sweltering and sweat stick on the back of your head. For a moment, you thought you were actually looking at the horseman again, wrought with the terror that he could venture out from the forest. That fear was quick to wane the longer you observed him and the horse.

The cape this horseman wore was far too stunning a red, far too pristine and kempt. His clothing, though doubtlessly antiquated, resembled something far more regal than what belonged on the shoulders of a ruthless undead mercenary. His blouse was a creamy white with a long black coat draped over top, an impeccably tied cravat the same hue as his cape left no doubt that this horseman had chosen his outfit carefully.

Before you could have stopped yourself, you blurted, “Oh shit, I think I know who it is!”

Nellie’s teeth glistened behind her glossy lips, her arms wound you now so as not to lose you in the commotion racing through the crowd as the horseman urged on his steed with a jab of his heels. “Oh, love, so do I. I’ve got to admit I’m disappointed, I expected a bit more ingenuity from him on this.”

Your voices melded in the fervor with everyone else’s, the noise was so great that it rattled in your head, stirring a dull ache between your eyes that you easily ignored as Nellie looped an arm with yours and shouldered through the dense crowd. Her elbows struck people like spurs, jarring them aside with you close in tow; in this moment, in her endeavor to witness the grand reveal for herself, she was an unstoppable force that you believed could challenge the true horseman.

Before long, you were once again at the forefront of the crowd before all eyes of the town hall, the police, and the rowdy citizens spearing glares into the back of your head. Their indignance went mostly unnoticed as the horseman dismounted his steed, stumbling to gain balance after his foot snagged in the stirrup, prompting a guttural snort from the woman at your side.

You, on the other hand, found yourself holding your chin a tad higher, mouth pulling into something of a condoling smile as though sharing in his embarrassment. There was misplaced pride bubbling in you at that moment, knowing that you had witnessed the real horseman in action, lived another day after it, and could believe in confidence that this town’s representation of the horseman was pure fabrication. 

“Who will be correct this year, I wonder?” came a stentorian voice, one strong enough to send ripples of silence through the crowd. From the top of the polished steps outside of town hall stood a man of great height, broad shoulders, and immaculate dress. The lines in his face and between his brows were deep, seemingly cavernous in the remnants of light in town. Although much of his youth had been lost to time, there was something vaguely recognizable about him.

“Well, it looks like the bigwig makes an appearance today,” Nellie gave a scoff, tightening her arm with yours. “What a blessing.”

You knew your hunch was right. “So, that’s Colson’s dad? Does he actually live in town? I haven’t seen him up until this point.”

“Theodore is more elusive than the actual horseman. He only ever shows up whenever there’s something involving Colson, or Colson manages a huge screw-up and needs damage control.” Nellie explained all of this without a hint of tenderness in her voice, her eyebrows digging inward. “Pretty obvious who it is this year, though.”

“Yeah.” You murmured.

It took the effort of two people to help shuck the outer layers of the horseman’s costume, and then the styrofoam mantle that sat high on his shoulders. Even though you were expectant of who were emerge from under the costume, a triumphant exclamation lodged in your throat as Colson dropped out from the mantle, smoothing a hand through his dark hair and offered a charming grin.

The town was in rapturous applause at that moment, arms swiping in the air as the people swelled forward, pushing you and Nellie several feet before they calmed. It took nearly an hour for the throng of people to disperse, slowly their excitement ebbed into drowsiness and the booths and hanging lanterns dimmed until town square was only allowed the faint halo of light from the street poles.

Nothing else came from the reveal of the horseman, it would seem nothing ever did. After all, the parade had lost its initial importance to quell hysteria, mellowing into an innocuous activity for families and easy transactions for gamblers. 

Colson bided his time before approaching you; waiting for the emptiness in the streets, the unsurprising absence of his father, and for Nellie to scope out her prize. When he did, he was once again aboard the great black horse with a manikin head tight under one arm, one you hadn’t noticed earlier.

“I forgot that I had brought it along,” he explained, taking your glances as an invitation. “I’m quite disappointed, really. The art department at the high school put a lot of time into this costume and the head, and I went and left it on my chair in the office.”

You gave the large horse a hearty part on its neck. “Well, it’s technically not an inaccuracy.”

His head slanted just slightly, his lips thinning as they widened. “Yes, I suppose that’s true. Only you and I have this odd fascination, don’t we? Only we would know these little details, they don’t matter so much to anyone else.” 

“I guess so,” you answered, quelling the jerk in your throat of wanting to cry out in offense. Between you both, one opinion came from experience, while the other came from something else entirely. “Why were you the horseman this year, by the way?”

For whatever reason, that whittled the smile off of his face while he considered your words as though they something precious and enormous. “I suppose… I’ve always wanted a chance to be the horseman. Just once. I wanted to know what it was like to sit in this saddle, with these clothes. Just to know the feeling.”

You thought it could have been the crisp evening air and the cold touch of rain on your skin, but his answer wasn’t what you expected. It sent a shudder down your spine that you rolled off with your shoulders, managing to feign an understanding nod while your eyes veered towards the manikin head once again.

“Do you care if I borrow that?” you asked, gesturing to it with your chin. 

“The head? Of course, of course. I planned to give it back to the art department eventually, just don’t lose it.” He barked a laugh, flinging it over himself after rolling it down into his hand. “I’ll ask for it back eventually.”

Colson guided the black horse off deeper into town, swallowed by the curtain of darkness that felt inescapable. It was beneath the faint glow of street lamp that you tilted the face of the head towards you, feeling the crawl of unease dance across your spine as you stared back at it.

The manikin head went untouched beneath a blanket in the storage closet of your father’s house until a week later when you finally steeled your nerves and found the gumption to venture back into the forest. Your days up until that point had edged by slowly in monotony, often while in the presence of Nellie, or Asta and Winston for dinner. It occurred to you after a while that the answers you wanted to find, you weren’t going to get from an old yellow newspaper, or voluntarily from the mouths of anyone in town.

When managed to fill your knapsack and grab a spare flashlight from the kitchen countertop, your phone emitted an eerily glow as it vibrated; the alarm you set went off for three o’clock in the morning, shy of any daybreak, but far enough along that you hoped that Moorwick would be deep in her slumber. 

It was a short-lived delight when you were able to find your way back into the Atticus without any trouble. There were still folks awake who searched the darkness for something to find, the police still flung their spotlights around and waited like anxious, prancing horses near the great maw of the forest, and yet it all went splendidly in your favor. You loathed the idea that you were growing placid to oddities and rhythm of the town, perhaps so much so that you almost wished something would go wrong.

Even the heavy veil of fog that wrapped around your body felt familiar, like a gentle touch from a friend. The flashlight barely broke the barrier of thick white, urging a quiver from your lips as you trudged onward through the forest, tilting the light towards the spindly appendages jutting from the ancient trees high above you, and then all around you with hopes of piercing the darkness.

“Where are you?” you barely found your voice above a whisper. “Come on, I know you’re here somewhere.”

Before, the horseman had found you while you were hopelessly lost. You hadn’t known what to anticipate back then, and truthfully you couldn’t claim that you did now. Even though you had forged some kind of deal with him, there lingered an uncertainty as to if he would honor it, or if he was even capable of comprehending it.

He wasn’t human. In life, he had been a cruel man.

At that moment, the severity of this possibility anchored your legs to where you stood as though they were made from lead. Your heart thrust hard against your ribs, while your stomach was aflutter in a fit of anxiousness that made your limbs tighten and tingle like something was crawling just beneath your skin.

It was a sensation that lasted only briefly before a tempestuous wind gushed through the lanky branches overhead and carried with it tormented cries and moans that were anything but human. There were so many of them; thousands of wails morphing into a single cacophony that sent your hands rocketing to your ears to close them off from the sound. 

You felt the ferocity of the air strike your back, toppling you forward to the ground where your palms were engulfed by the mud and wet leaves when you tried to catch yourself. The hellish screams dissipated into nothing with a final, lasting screech so piercing that your ears were ringing.

The ground stayed below your fingertips, digging restlessly and deeper into the earth to find something solid to grab onto. You kept your face low as well, just feeling the touch of wet leaves on the tip of your nose. The watery mud seeped through the dense fabric of your gloves, wrapping your fingers in such a bite of cold that they stiffened, but it was a reminder to you that what you experienced was real.

You didn’t lift your head until the ground nearby gurgled under the weight of heavy footfalls that moved in unison like an animal. By the time you traced the shuffle of fabric and clatter of metal, you had the flashlight back in hand with it focused ahead at the horseman as he approached you.

The thought was there to rise up and run away again, but even if you did, he was a keeper of the forest and knew every tree, stone, and ravine- you would never get far. So, you sat back on your legs, hands draped across your thighs with the light tilted high enough to keep the horseman’s chest within view.

“I need to know… I need to know if you are going to keep your end of the bargain.” You said this with a long breath, noticing that none of his weapons were brandished. “I just- tell me, I’m looking for a man who came into this forest around twenty years ago. He would have run into you. Did you kill him?”

It was an eerie kind of calm than eased its way through your skin to your bones, ebbing the tension in your body despite being in the presence of a being less than human. The horseman did not stir for a while, simply standing in the reach of your light before turning with a flourish of his crimson cape back towards his nightmarish steed.

“Wait! No, you have to tell me somehow!” you choked out, finally mustering the strength to stagger upright. “I made a deal to find your head, you made a deal with me to help find my father! You have to help me find him!”

His steps faltered a moment, the tatters of his cape just touching the ground. Whether it was from the intrigue of the bargain or something else, he turned towards you once more. With both arms aloft, he let his hands hover above the black mist spiraling from the base of his neck. 

He was making a gesture to his head, you were sure of that much.

Your tongue glided across your tip as you nodded fiercely. “Your head? You want your head? I know, I said I’d help you get it back. I need to know that you’ll help me, too.”

There was no change in his posture, nor the way he held his hands over the emptiness above his tall collar. You kept the light steady on him, though it faltered for just a moment when his motions were the same as before, only far more severe as though stressing it.

“What? I don’t know- I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me?” your words tumbled from between chattering teeth. “God, I- you want me to get your head back? You- do you want me to get your head back first?”

To that, he let his arms slowly come to rest at his sides again.

“No way, that’s not how this deal is supposed to go.” As you took several bold strides forward, the horseman remained unthwarted. “You won’t even help me until after I get your head? That’s not an even exchange. Th-that’s not fair! That’s just playing dirty.”

There was something in what you said that aggravated him as in a few short steps, the old armor covering his chest pressed lightly into your nose and you felt his hand grip up the length of your arm again, groping firmly at your elbow. He gave such a hard shake that he dragged most of your body with him in the motion.

You got the gist of what it meant. “_A deal’s a deal._”

He released you after that, leaving you to stare after him listlessly for a moment in your attempt to figure out what to do next. One thing you could ascertain is that he took the agreement seriously, and there was a chance that this was your opportunity to gain safe passage through the forest. Even if he refused to act outside of his own interests, having any measure of benevolence from the horseman would be instrumental to finding out what happened to your father.

“Horseman,” you called out to him, waiting until he was mounted in the saddle before continuing. “I’ll… keep my end of the bargain to get your head, but where do I even begin looking for it? Give me a direction to go here.”

There the horseman sat atop of his alabaster steed which chomped impatiently at the bit wedged high in its shredded jaws. With a single hard spur, the horse reared up and surged forward towards you. Your face warped into terror as you whirled around, tearing off in the opposite direction you had come, flashlight flipping through the air violently as you sprinted for the cover of trees.

Your fingertips just skimmed the coarse bark of a tree before you were yanked away by the back of your coat and hoisted off the ground. A scream tore from your throat, limbs flailing in the air as the world around you swirled into an indistinguishable mass of black. Everything had happened simultaneously and quick, yet it seemed so slow in your mind. 

The horseman pulled you atop of his galloping steed and sat you across his thighs, barely bothering to accommodate you in the saddle even after you managed to sit upright in front of him. With each beat the horse’s feet made against the ground, you felt the power of its body send ripples up through you, vibrations hard enough that you thought they shook your bones despite your attempts to stay as closely seated on its back as you were able.

You had to squeeze your eyes shut, turning your face away from the gushes of frigid wind that bit into your flesh and filled your nostrils with sudden bursts that you couldn’t breathe. It occurred to you then that you could hear the virulent shrieks on the air again, this time it was so close as though racing alongside the horses’ monstrous strides that it was nearly tempting enough to lure your gaze. 

In that moment, you came upon the realization that the horseman had urged on the beast even faster, seeming to outrun the turbulent wind that mellowed into slight hiss that burned the tips of your ears in cold. The horseman’s arms were tight against you while his hands held the reins taut and high, his broad chest flush with your back to keep you near and settled in front of him.

This proximity launched your mind into a mess of convoluted thoughts that ricocheted all around, making your heart crash hard against your ribs in panic and your stomach open into a void as though dropped from a height. It ignited something else in you as well, enthralled you in a way that took the worst of the edge off of the situation.

So, when the white horse finally slowed to a walk and then halted in command to the horseman pulling at the reins, you weren’t able to follow him to the ground at once. You could tell his agitation purely by the swish of his cape as he shifted his feet around before stalking back up to you, waiting for you to cuff your arms around his before prying you out of the saddle and to the ground.

Your legs were light, each step felt the same like you could float away at any moment. Still, you were able to gather your bearings enough to flick your flashlight back on, albeit shakily, pointing it after the horseman as you stayed close behind him.

The moment he finally stopped was when you felt the water rush into your boots and stick your pants flat against your calves. You took the light off of him, jerking it all around from the sprawling canopy of trees to the black void in the distance, and finally to the ground which was mostly submerged in murky, brown water disguised by tall vegetation and a thin layer of green algae sitting serenely atop of it.

“What is this? A swamp? A bog?” you weren’t speaking to the horseman, you weren’t speaking to anyone as much you were grumbling aloud. The horseman didn’t venture much farther after that, the gushing water at his legs became still. 

You took the flashlight off of him to the ground near his feet, taking notice particular shape of a large hole in the ground that was beneath the watchful gaze of a withering tree. The closer you wandered to it, the more it became apparent it was man-made in design with crisp edges and layers of soil and sediment that formed too clean of walls to have been created by tools of some sort.

With the horseman’s presence there, you didn’t need to ask to know what it was. “This must be your grave. You were probably buried with your head, right? Since it isn’t here, maybe it got carried away in a flood? There is no way I’m going digging around here.”

He gave you an easy answer with a wave of his arm, reaching then towards his waist for the hilt of his sword. When he drew it from its sheath, you were hit with a hot wave of adrenaline that made your dig your heels back into the loose ground on instinct. He did not advance on you, rather he placed the tip of the blade into the wet dirt, manipulating it easily until the lines and curves he created turned into letters, and finally into a word.

You let the light hover over the word for a moment, struggling to catch your breath through the snag in your throat at what he wrote. It was sloppy scrawl, but you could discern it, reading aloud in your mind simply as: Moorwick.

“Wait, wait, your head isn’t here?” you shuffled your feet around, sloshing mud and water higher on yourself. “Your head is in Moorwick? As in it is _actually in town_? Someone must have taken your head centuries ago, it has to be underground somewhere at this point.”

The horseman took his sword and tapped the word he drew into the mud repeatedly, impatiently. If there was one thing you had grown to understand about him, it was his inability to fathom that not having a head made it difficult to communicate. 

Still, he continued on incessantly with his weapon until it finally urged you to say something. “Okay, okay! Okay! I get it! Your head is in town somewhere. Someone took it. It has to be–”

He stopped you short this time by thrusting the sword out towards you as though reprimand your line of thinking. You squawked at him to not do that just as he dragged a deep line into the ground; once, twice, and a third time as emphasis on what he sketched out.

Clearly, what he was wanting you to understand was a possibility you weren’t considering. Your voice floated into the silence that married well with the frenzied chirps of frogs, and the hiss of locusts that surrounded you. You stared blankly at that spot for a long while, the horseman remaining eerily motionless the entire time, body facing towards you with obvious interest.

The thought that dawned on you made your eyebrows cave inward, eyes thinning in disbelief. You couldn’t say that you would live the rest of your life quite the same after these encounters with the horseman, but even the idea that sprouted into your head seemed far-fetched, a hard reach for something that didn’t exist.

Still, you let your voice echo the dubiety of your thoughts. “Wait. You’re- are you trying to tell me that someone in town actually has your head? As in, they’re someone _actually alive_?”

The horseman’s hands jumped towards the sky as though in relief, the tall blade now towering over him. He then flipped the hilt down, spearing the sword several inches into the ground. You could only gape on in complete astonishment, slowly tracing your fingers across your mouth in hopes of somewhat masking your stupefied look.

If it wasn’t enough that you held a pact with a legendary specter, now you were dealing with someone who was as aware as you that the stories weren’t only stories.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some time has passed and you continue to return to the Atticus, no closer to solving the mystery of the horseman’s head. After an encounter with the dead, along with something far worse, you were beginning to understand the horseman’s existence wasn’t so straightforward.

It was always around the hour of three o'clock in the morning when you departed from your father’s noisy old house and reunited yourself with the displeasures of the Atticus. 

At this point, your excursions had melded finely into your routine like clockwork, and you no longer needed to dedicate any important amount of time to hurriedly shoving things into a backpack. You kept one prepared at all times, inside the storage closet next to the front door, away from prying eyes and any meddling.

There was a particular heftiness to it tonight, however, making it just a little more difficult to navigate through the tall brush, and ducking below the beams of light that the police swung around. You were far more careful these days than you had once been, as you were positive you had been spotted at least twice since this entire ordeal began. 

Subsequently, you had come to know Maverick Decatur, the acting sheriff of Moorwick who had held your gaze with piercing green eyes, and a handshake strong enough to make you teeter in pain.

Just as you were a regular at Nellie’s shop, he and his goons were as well. The first few visits in the past had amounted to nothing more than cursory glances, changing only after Nellie had dropped the hint that someone had been seen. Afterward, you felt his eyes from across the shop, oftentimes having the moxie to challenge a glare you pinned on him.

With the parade a month behind the town already, there was little for the police to do right now other than patrol the great maw of the forest, and observe the mess of mudslides that had apparently wiped a handful of people off the road at this point. They were well covered on the radio and in the Moowick Inquirer, often reported in past tense- often placed in the obituaries without a formal investigation.

It was with great measure of regret that those newsprints weren’t wrong; the horseman had shown you to several of the cars, far away from the entrance of the forest. Some were so recent, so fresh, that the batteries had yet to drain completely and the taillights glared ahead, barely cutting through the black swirling mist. Others showed incredible age, blemished with thick rust and chipped paint; invaded by vines, saplings, and heavy foliage that coiled tightly around the frame and called it home.

An unsettling pattern with all of them, you noticed, was that there wasn’t a single corpse to be found. Not inside the car, nor out of it. There were none lying around on the forest floor, their belongings all accounted for still inside the vehicles. It was almost as though they had vanished, or perhaps more appropriately, had been snatched away.

“You see everything in the forest, what happened to all those people?” you called out to the horseman one night, breath forming wispy coils of fog that rose from your mouth. “Did you kill them?”

He never offered a worthwhile response, didn’t bother to write in the dirt about it, either. You were fast to pass guilt on him for their murders, yet a part of you always felt a twinge of uncertainty afterward. With all that you experienced, you knew that the horseman did not dwell alone within the Atticus- there were things far darker, hiding far deeper into the heart of it, a place that the horseman would not allow you venture. 

It was a thought that lurked in the back of your mind even now as you squeezed yourself behind a tree, staying still as the searchlight scanned the area nearby. A couple of young, brave recruits had taken to moseying a little farther away from the rest, perhaps still more children than adults when they stopped to challenge one another to stand ten minutes just beyond the first big tree in front of them.

You pushed the air from your lungs and through your teeth when their lights turned, gradually fading back into the distance with the rest, submerging you beneath a weighty veil of black.

What a start to the night.

Pushing onward, you were greeted by the thickening mist that seemed to drape across you in a sort of familiarity, pressing weight on your shoulders that only added to the burden of the bag you already carried with you. It acted almost too alive; too aware to just be the result of the unfortunate weather, especially now that the near-impenetrable sheet of white thinned in some areas where your light reached.

The path ahead of you was clear enough for the flashlight to at least guide your feet around decaying trees, and near cavernous drops between huge walls of sediment and stone. You were well acclimated to the canorous symphony of crickets and chirping frogs that quieted as you passed them until you heard nothing at all.

You thought it would have been unnatural to hear anything for too long in the Atticus, even the ground gurgling underfoot as the rainwater and mud suctioned your boots into the earth was bizarre. However, it was also that same moment that you finally turned around, hoisting the light just over your head to get a better scope around you.

While the fog had graciously let you through, it was not going to let you turn back. Once again, your light could not penetrate the solid sheet of white that surrounded you. It had you flanked on each side you flicked the light to, seeming to enclose nearer and nearer as though you trap you inside. You pushed forward on your toes, yanking your boots free from the ground, and surged along the narrow path it still had carved for you.

_‘Fuck this, fuck this, fuck this!’_

Streaks of white bounced in front of you as the flashlight thrashed in your hand, your heart felt like a hard beat in your ears and against your ribs, while heat bloomed through your limbs and crept along the back of your neck, inviting the frigid nips of wind against your skin.

You were afraid to stop and test what would happen if the mist could consume you; before nothing had, but it wasn’t a chance worth taking. Until your sides pinched and twisted like a haggard blade cutting into you, you did not consider letting your gait falter, and even then, you pressed onward with your body hunched forward, hands grappling your sides, breath shaking and fierce. 

It was a tall root that finally stopped you, snagging you by the toe of your boot and sending your palms smacking down through standing water and mud. You bit out some harsh words, quickly scrambling to your feet, swinging your arms away from your body as the water gushed into your boots, and seeped through your heavy layers of clothes. The air was particularly excited to take a bite at your skin, chilling you to the marrow.

When you finally shook the numbness from your fingertips, pointing the light around, you thought it was reminiscent of the location of the horseman’s grave; submerged under feet of water, mud, and peat. It wasn’t the still surface of the water that had your interest, however.

It was the trees. They grew strangely here.

You emptied the murky rainwater from your boots before walking on, fixing the light from the bulbous, knobby trunks of the trees which had grown gargantuan with branches that splayed across the sky like skeletal limbs. You nearly stumbled back into the water again, trying to see how far up they went, the light came nowhere close to revealing that to you.

“Holy shit…” you breathed, whirling around to do exactly the same at another tree before climbing atop one of the large roots that protruded from the water as ruins did from the sea. “These are so old.”

If you had to wager a guess, they were among the most ancient in the Atticus. It left you to wonder just how close to the heart of the forest the fog had brought you. You examined the unperturbed water once it settled, moving the beam farther away from you towards the tiny pockets of land that had managed to breach above it, and the immense roots that sprawled like appendages to something even bigger.

Something caught your eye then, faint at first, but grew brighter once you watched it long enough and flicked the switch on the flashlight. Your fingertips reached for the coarse bark of the tree to stay steady in the darkness, while the distant glow of green grew sharper. 

That curiosity brought you closer, minding the roots that you hopped across and the water that rose to your shins as you waded through it. Occasionally the green flame would stutter, if only for a second as it moved through the void of black. 

After a moment you saw it, the dark glove that held the lantern aloft and the legs of a great white horse. Your heart gave a jump of excitement, finally finding something familiar in this new realm of the Atticus, yet all the same, you thought something was off- it was you who had found the horseman this time, not the other way around.

His path seemed linear; confident and steady, never once moving the light anywhere but ahead. You expected him to turn the horse towards you at any moment, yet he showed the nary sign that he even acknowledged your existence. 

A snag caught in your throat, stopping you short of calling out to him once the slosh of water reached your ears. By that point, the horseman had already passed by with his lantern, what strayed behind him sounded like much as you did when you were struggling through the height of the flood.

Your fingertips danced across the plastic knob on your flashlight, contemplating whether or not you wanted to see what else was out there- what else lurked within the forest that you had yet to see. The ache in your heart returned, squeezing behind your ribs as you slowly lifted your arm, pushing your thumb into the switch and brightened the area in that direction.

At first, you could not see them, they made no noise apart from the water they plodded through; lethargically, barely managing to stay upright as they walked. 

They were _people_, or rather, the remnants _of_ people.

You went no further once your light landed on one of them, once a man, now a walking corpse without a head. Nothing remained of his head and neck, though you were fortunate you could not see the extent of the gore from where you watched. Another one was without arms, directly behind was a person missing their mandible. 

Even worse than them were the folks who were eviscerated with deep, dark gouges in their cores, intestines still fresh, glistening red that skimmed the surface of the water. You could see the sheets of bloated, gray flesh that swung from their faces and arms, imagined the milkiness of their eyes and swore you detected wafts of their fetid stench under your nose.

Maybe most astonishing to you than any of that was the hue of green that seemed to leave a path where they had come, the very same that the horseman had carried in his lantern. It was clear to you that he was guiding them all somewhere, and the dead loyally followed.

_‘There are so many… so many dead people…’_

Your back hit resistance from the heavy fog still lurking along the forest floor, yet you pushed your way through anyway and back the way had come.

Something easier said than done.

Everything around you looked the same no matter the direction that you swung the light. The trees were thin and many with spindly, winding branches barely managing their own weight and foliage. Whether towards the ground or the sky, you could not recognize the trees, nor the plants or rocks at your feet. You had not wandered far enough from the swamp to lose your way so quickly, yet that’s exactly what seemed to have happened.

The panic was building in your chest quickly, stealing your breath as your stomach tightened and coiled around itself. It was far more difficult to stand still than it was to move, so you kept on instinctively, pace quickening for reasons you couldn’t explain while your shallow breathing meshed with the white fog that encased you.

Your shoulders clipped the trees you wedged between, while your body tensed as though prepared for a fall or collide with something else. Beneath your feet, the ground gargled and threw your feet around enough times to arouse a swell of pain in your ankles and knees. 

For once in your life, you desperately wanted the horseman to find you.

Just as you cleared your throat to call out to him, the branches of nearby trees cracked and landed in a heap on the ground, prompting your light in that direction. Again, the fog dissipated before your eyes like waking from the haze of a dream, only this was something you would not wake from.

You didn’t know how to describe the feeling that gripped you like a vise, made the blood run cold in your veins and consume you with such lethal chill, but the feeling was familiar. It was the same dread that had followed you when you first came to Moorwick, the eyes that you felt watching you as you drove past the colossal expanse of the Atticus.

Yes, it was coming back to you now. 

The brightness of your flashlight began to fail, flickering wildly almost as though someone other than you were controlling the switch. Your eyes darted from the spot ahead to the light, giving several hard whacks against your palm before your vision filled with a steady stream once again. This time, however, as you glanced back ahead, something was there that wasn’t before.

Suddenly, your throat went dry and your jaw fell slack as did your grip on the flashlight. Although it was difficult to discern through the tight bundle of lank trees, there appeared a towering black mass in a shape you couldn’t convince yourself you had missed before. The beam of light began to shake in your hand, palms slick against the plastic upon the realization that you could see the ground below it.

You managed just a brief look at its emaciated face which was twisted and bent in a way you couldn’t begin to describe, sallow skin stretched taut over two gaping sockets that seemed to reflect voids of nothing. It made no noise as it weaved through the trees towards you, floating several feet above the ground at an easy pace that sent your mind spiraling into a fit of hysterics.

You were gone after that, feet kicking up chunks of mud and litterfall as you sprinted away from the creature. 

The world raced past your eyes; trees lost their shape and turned to blurs that you only just navigated around. Just as it was before, nothing around you was familiar, there was no way to know if you were actually running away, or merely running circles where you would eventually come back to face it.

Still, you persisted despite the way your chest burned and the saliva dribbled from the corner of your mouth from the breaths you weren’t able to take. The light flew in all ways, sometimes nearly springing out of your hands, and the backpack still hanging off your shoulders came close one too many times to snagging betwixt the trees and on the tips of branches. 

The passage of time was so much different when faced with terror, the adrenaline racing through your veins made it that much worse. And it was only that that kept you upright, that dulled the utter agony in every limb.

So, when the moment came that the horseman’s great white steed fell into your view, although without its rider, lead formed in your legs and dragged you to the wet ground on your palms. You couldn’t will your body to move anymore, at least not for the moment as your chest expanded, and sucked in hard gasps of air and then choked on it.

The dead horse gave an eerie whinny; simultaneously a shrill sound that you likened to nails on a chalkboard with something else that hardly seemed right to come from it.

You clicked your tongue at it after several attempts, fixing the light across your shoulder to see if the creature was still behind you. Nothing lingered beyond the trees, nor in the distance so far as you could tell. 

You were beginning to wonder if it had even chased you at all.

When you faced forward again, the horse’s face and hollow eyes were level with yours.

“It’s probably not a good thing you’re used to me, huh?” you said, coarsely. “C’mere, let me get up.”

It remained steady as you placed a hand on the stirrup of the saddle and heaved your body up from the ground, legs still pulling opposite of that. You flicked the light from the stirrup to the seat of the saddle, considering whether you had the strength left in you to get up into it. You had never tried to mount the beast without the horseman’s help.

The horse turned its head then, teeth chomping at the tarnished metal lodged in its jowls as it stretched its nose towards you. A swift ghost of a smile touched your lips, fingers gently skimming its face. 

It wasn’t what you expected at all. There was a substance that glued your fingers together when you pinched them, piquing your curiosity enough to give the horse a couple of hearty pats. Although the hair on its body was flawless; a pristine white, the texture was absolutely disgusting, stiff, and sticky. 

You wiped the substance on your pants before you were tempted to smell it, grabbing for the reins and the horses’ mane while trying to fit your toe through the stirrup. “Alright, good horse. Don’t move, please don’t move.”

Trouble came when the horse threw its head high, feet pacing the ground with hard stomps just as you were able to find yourself in the seat. With one single yank, the reins were ripped from your hands and the horse surged forward. You felt the air slam against your face and chest, forcing you to hunch forward over the saddle, twisting your fingers to the root of the horse’s man to stay aboard.

The screams that tore from your throat were smothered by wind, you wanted to squeeze your eyes shut and stay that way until the horse finally stopped, and even when you didn’t, the flashlight was already long lost. Each thrust the horse’s hooves made into the ground sent waves rocketing through your weak limbs, pushing you to hold tighter onto its mane.

As much as the words piled in the back of your throat, the urgency to coax them out was futile. You could do nothing but press them taut, listen to the screams, the agony of the wind, and the sharp crack, snap of brittle trees as the horse charged through on its path. 

It was then that your heart jumped high in your throat as a large hand gripped the saddle horn as you were dislodged from your seat, thrown higher on the horse’s neck. Just as your grip began slipping, you were snagged around the waist, roughly hoisted back into the saddle against the horseman’s firm chest.

Even once he had the reins wound tight in his hand, slowing the beast to a smoother gait, you could not manage a word over the rapid drumming in your ears. You weren’t particularly mindful of the way his arm cuffed around you tightly, holding you much too near while he guided the horse with the other hand.

“Where have you been all night?” 

Predictably, he gave no response; not even a succinct wave of his hand he often did to dismiss your prying. Once fishing a new flashlight from your bag and regaining your bearings, the light stayed focused on him as you backed your thighs into a fallen tree and sat down.

The gravity of everything that had occurred that night was finally weighing heavier on you than the bag you carried. You faced the light to the ground near your feet, ducking your head between your arms, atop of your thighs to relish the moment of peace; this rare opportunity to give your fatigued heart a rest. 

You only moved when the log gave a jump, jarring you up straight with your wrist wrenching the light near where the horseman now sat close by, examining his sword. Perhaps more bizarre than your entire night was witnessing this one little thing. As utterly uninteresting as it was, it was such an absurdly human thing that he was doing.

“Horseman,” you started, hiking your leg atop the log as you turned towards him. “I saw something earlier. It could float, I couldn’t even stand to look at its face.”

His torso slanted slightly, it was enough to let you know he was listening.

You weren’t even sure where you were going with your words, it was just a relief that you could fumble through sentences at all again and that you were somewhere safe. “I don’t even know how to explain it. When I first came here, I remember feeling like the forest was watching me. I got the same feeling from that thing.”

The horseman hunched over his thighs, dragging the tip of the blade through the wet soil. You couldn’t tell what he was writing in it, pushing you to lick your lips and continue.

“You’ve been here for centuries, I know you’ve seen it before.” The space narrowed between you both as you shifted closer. “Tell me what the fuck that thing was.”

Your fingers twitched against the touch of his coarse glove and rough grip as he guided the light to the letters that scrawled messily into the ground. At first, you couldn’t discern it at all, it seemed like your question agitated him from had badly it was written.

After a short lapse, you were finally able to make sense of it. “Atticus? What does Atticus mean? That’s the name of the forest, yeah?”

True to his impatience, he repeatedly dug the blade into the ground near the word, giving your hand and flashlight a hard shake. You felt like he was telling you the answer was far more obvious than you were making it out to be.

So, you sat for a solid minute or two, tracing your tongue along both rows of teeth, against your gums and cheeks while you contemplated it. All the while, the horseman waited for your answer, eerily still in his anticipation. 

“Atticus is the forest.” You were beginning to test the theory swirling in your head. “Atticus is the forest. I asked you about the thing I saw. You wrote Atticus. Are you trying to imply that the forest was named after that thing?”

To this, he slid his hand lower onto the blade itself and scratched several lines under the name.

You’re getting warmer. You’re almost there, but you’re still missing something important.

It didn’t take you long to come to the conclusion that the horseman was wanting you to make. “That thing _is_ the Atticus? An embodiment of the Atticus?”

He gave your hand another shake that nearly threw you from the log. Again, you listened to the wet soil move as he shaped different letters as well as he could with an instrument intended for different purposes entirely. 

The swell of excitement in your chest plummeted the moment you fixed the light on the three letters that he carved into the ground. 

Large and distinct, you read the letters aloud, “_G-O-D_.”

You felt a chill crawl up the length of your spine to the back of your neck, uneasy and a feeling you were well acquainted with at this point. Every instinct in you was prompting you to swing the flashlight around for the creature again, yet you were not free of the horseman’s grasp.

“Atticus is a _god_?” Those words passed your lips barely as a whisper. “What kind of fu–”

He was writing erratically again, leaving you to decipher the significance of a single word. If there was any possibility for a void to open in your stomach, it had reached that point. You were beginning to feel nauseous by everything; overwhelmed by the night, by the information that seemed far too outlandish to be true.

You still felt his hand on your own, it was no false reality.

If there’s one thing he had taught you since forming the bargain, it was to dig below the surface of your understanding of the world, think beyond the realm of reason. So, when your eyes slowly studied the severity of the shapes he made, you already knew what he was alluding to.

“Cursed. You’re cursed.” A sigh quivered from your lips. “The Atticus- Atticus is the god who cursed you, right? Is that why you’re here in the forest? I saw you earlier with all of those dead people. Is that part of your curse, too?”

The cold air touched your flesh when his hand finally fell away from your own, the sword returned to its sheath, and he rose from the log.

As much as you didn’t want to recognize it, this complicated matters with retrieving his head. Someone living in town had the head under lock and key, most likely, and on top of that, you were dealing with a creature revered as a god.

For a moment, you sat completely stupefied with your hands strewn about your face, tugging at the skin to make sense of all of this. To figure out what you could do to fulfill your end of the agreement. Getting a head back from a human was one thing, meddling with a god was completely out of left field and the fine print you neglected to read on the figurative contract you signed.

“What the hell did I get myself into?”

When you finally weaseled your attention back to the horseman, he was standing before you, far too close and as unmoving as a gargoyle perched atop a cathedral. You pointed the light at his torso, observing the dull gleam on his armor. 

“I’ll figure it out somehow, someway.” An exasperated breath hissed from between your teeth, along with the frustrations of the night. “As long as you keep your end of the deal, I’ll keep mine. That hasn’t changed.”

He came closer to you then and lifted a hand towards your face. Those old gloves were rough against your cheek, gradually drifting lower until his thumb traced across your chin and nearer to the divot beneath your lips. 

You squirmed on the log, pulling your face away from his touch before he could have done much else and hefted the knapsack onto your thighs. The heat that climbed your neck and burned your ears was enough to make you wither into your shoulders as you fussed with the bag.

“I have a surprise for you, don’t lose it.” 

At first, the horseman did nothing when you revealed the mannequin head to him, all with its soulless gaze and a glossy permanent smile. You snapped your fingers away once he took it from you in both hands, holding it aloft and level where his own head should have been.

You barely traced his movement as he turned with the head, hiked it far above his shoulders in one hand and flung it hard. It soared through the trees, beyond the scope of your flashlight and landed with a great commotion as it broke apart branches and trees alike.

There were no words adequate enough to describe that experience, nor could you conjure up a single thing to say. Honestly, you didn’t blame him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You could no longer refute that your relationship with the horseman was more complex than you initially thought it to be. What did it mean? Just as you’re coming to terms with this, Colson offers a gift that could change everything. And Moorwick’s more prestigious residents let you know that there are eyes always watching.

The early December air was an unabashed presence to you that night. It slithered beneath the many layers you could muster while still being able to move, setting the hair on the back of your neck tall like spines, numbed the tips of your ears, and cemented your fingers wound the horse’s stiff reins. The seat beneath you felt harder than usual, nothing short of being jostled around on a big stone as you attempted to ride through the horse’s rough gait.  
  
Perhaps more than anything, it felt rather amiss to be astride in the saddle without the horseman there to keep you upright. You were used to the steadiness of his chest to catch you and his arms anchoring you down into the seat. Without him, the wind prowled excitedly, pushing against your back with a bite that you felt cut through your skin and bone, and launch you atop of the horse’s neck more than once.  
  
“It is way too cold to do this tonight, let me off,” you complained over the whistle and wail of the breeze, and the muffs tightly cradling your ears.  
  
The horse continued to trot in the same wide circle obediently, showing little regard to your commands despite your grip on the reins.  
  
From the middle of the circle, you clenched an eye against a glare of white that only just illuminated the horseman’s chest in a halo of light. It had been at his insistence that you were even doing this, or more accurately: he had dismounted, gave his steed a swift smack on the ass and sent it surging forward into the circle before you could have hopped off.

You could only imagine his amusement at your distress at every given moment during this ordeal. Still, he stayed nearby, digging a gurgling mess of mud and rainwater into one spot as he followed the motions easy strides his steed made.  
  
Even you had to admit that after a while, the fear that had lodged itself into your throat ebbed back into your chest, dissipating like a mist as you were able to put a pattern to the gait.  
  
“If you don’t- you know what? _Fine_.” You felt the ache in your fingers as you bent them, coiling the reins tighter around your hands. “Can you at least tell me some stuff about the Atticus? Was it gonna do anything to me when I saw it? In hindsight, I don’t think it even followed me when I ran.”  
  
The horseman gave little response aside from lifting his shoulders at the slightest, something you were attuned to noticing, yet probably would have gone unseen by anyone else. “What do you mean you don’t know? Have you looked at that thing? It can’t hear me right now, right?”  
  
To this, he did something different. He raised a thickly clad hand to the open space above his shoulders, motioning up and down with it and through the black mist spiraling from the base of his neck. At first, he did it slowly, moving with greater fervor when you didn’t give a response to him within the first five seconds

Your voice jumped with each hard landing you made back down into the saddle, attempting to grip the horse’s flanks with your thighs as best you could. “God, can’t you just write on paper or something? Is it blind? Are you saying you don’t know what it looks like?”  
  
He thrust his hand to the side, clearly exasperated, soon leveling back in the same spot it had been before with the same gestures. You wrestled your eyes away from him, giving them a chance to rest from the piercing light beaming from his chest, all the while mulling over what he could be possibly trying to gesticulate.  
  
The thoughts ricocheted through your mind and echoed on your lips wherein you invited the probable, the trivial, the outlandish, and the downright ludicrous to challenge him. With each answer, he rebuffed by throwing his hand out towards you as though chucking your very words back at you.  
  
Releasing your frustration with a breath through your nose, you pulled the reins towards your waist, feeling the horse chomp back on the bit fused deep against its cheeks. It halted at your command, prompting you to turn to focus on the horseman. You observed him closely for a moment and his movements, following the way his hand swaying in the air.  
  
“Wait…” you mumbled, noticing that he was motioning around the spot you assumed his face would have been. The longer you watched, the more you recognized it, feeling the muscles in your hand slowly begin to slide from one side of your face to the next. “Does… does the Atticus have different faces? Can it have different faces?”  
  
Clearly delighted by this, the horseman flicked his fingers in the air, pushing you to dig a little deeper still. The realization struck you at that moment with an excitable flutter in your chest while you slapped the horn on the saddle, giving the alabaster horse a startle. “The Atticus is a shapeshifter!”  
  
The horseman sprawled his arms wide, giving one hearty clap before lumbering through the muck and water of the forest floor towards you. When he approached, he already had his arms reaching out for you, waiting with all the great rigidity of a statue as you carefully teetered your body around in the saddle until your legs were placed together.  
  
When you felt his arms against your back once you propelled yourself from the horse and against his chest, you couldn’t explain the sensation that overcame you. Fire seared through your skin, every limb and bone; the overwhelming lightness in your heart was also so simultaneously burdened and heavy that it nearly brought tears to your eyes. Even though there was little to hold onto, you found yourself grasping tightly to his shoulders as he held you aloft with all the same sturdiness of the ancient trees that surrounded you.  
  
Slowly, surely, the slither of light between your bodies grew in intensity in the same way you were once greeted by an orange sunrise through the curtains at home. The same crisp air that flooded your lungs and left your lips through chattering teeth was that very same that horseman could give you as well.  
  
How many times had he held you before? How many times had he touched you before, yet now there was something significant in that you could not feel any warmth from his body. Another bitter thought crossed your mind, however. Perhaps strange to say, but there was a part of you only just now recognizing he wasn’t truly a being among the living.  
  
The light on him gleamed against your back as he followed close behind you towards a fallen tree; colossal and bent, you recognized its species as one of the same you had identified that night a while ago where the horseman guided the dead through the marsh, subsequent your encounter with the Atticus.  
  
You were near enough to there now for the frigid winds to have substance, to stiffen your bones and toes until it hurt to move.  
  
Asta Lang had offered a foreboding warning last supper about winter in Moorwick, although only going as far as to say that it was cruel as it was beautiful. Before the forest had gained the notoriety it had because of the horseman’s legend, it had another that you felt was similarly disconcerting.  
  
In those days, anyone who fled from crime, sin, and cold, who sought sanctuary in the cavernous holes of the grandfather trees, or the depths of the tunnels beneath the ravine’s were often lost forever; wandered forever because the forest willed it.  
  
Whispers on the wind enticed them with a glimmer of hope, leading them astray through thicket, thorns, and the bogs. The legend was that those souls who meandered the forest did not know they had died, yet they still carried their corpses with them in perdurable faith.  
  
On occasion, in times before entering the forest had become taboo, they would find remains buried in the snow, though more often than not they were never found at all.  
  
“Hey, why did the Atticus curse you?” you asked him, adjusting your flashlight to his back as he slid a chunk of metal along the edge of the sword he had unsheathed. The noise was abrasive, yet still sharp as it cut the air as he followed the length of the weapon to its tip. Your voice delved the forest into silence once again while he turned his torso towards you. “Hey, you said it yourself. You said it’s a god who cursed you. So, what for?”  
  
The sword hovered in his hand as though he were contemplating using it to write in the mud. Eventually, he snapped free a branch from the tree and stuck it into the ground.  
  
Your light flicked down over his hand to observe what he wrote with keen interest. He stayed at it for a while, longer than he usually would when he complied in giving you answers that weren’t a roundabout game of charades. You shifted where you sat, hunching across your knees until you could finally discern the messy scrawl in the ground.  
  
“‘_Betrayal_’ and ‘_revenge_’?” It was a response you should have anticipated, but did not. “I’m guessing because of your head, right?”  
  
The tip of the stick floated around in his hand as he seemed to consider a reply briefly, interest falling flat as he tossed it aside in preference for sharpening his sword.  
  
Knowing that was the end of the conversation, a coil of white fog floated up in front of your face as you exhaled. Since adjusting to his presence, he had revealed himself to be a bit more complex a creature than just the simple murder machine from legend. Although, even you had to admit that sometimes you forgot that he had once breathed the air the same as you, lived and felt warm- that he hadn’t always been this way.  
  
“What are we doing just sitting here in the cold? Hell, what am I doing here?” It was a question you had been rooting deep on recently, one that seemed enough to evoke intrigue from the horseman as well when he stopped sharpening. “This isn’t getting us anywhere, is it? Just sitting around here.”  
  
And yet, your thoughts spoke in soft tones to you, louder than anything else,_ ‘I don’t think I mind it as much anymore…’  
_  
You clicked your tongue as you hoisted the knapsack off the log at your side, taking the skinny body of the flashlight between your teeth as you sifted the mess inside for a notebook you usually kept hidden beneath the floorboards in the bedroom from sheer paranoia. 

The notebook held a strange mustiness to it now from how often it had been hauled around during your nightly excursions, thrown into the mud or rainwater, and then dried with a hairdryer.  
  
Half of it was an unusable cluster of brown pages fused by the same ectoplasmic substance the alabaster steed oozed from its skin, but the remnants towards the back held your sketches of town, of names, lines, and questions you had hastily scrawled onto the paper between dinner visits and moments of Nellie’s nosiness.  
  
“So, I’ve started looking in obvious places like antique shops, the museum in town; tried to sneak to the back, got thrown out,” you started, flipping through several pages as you went. “I even went back to the library archives to try to find something out, didn’t help. Legend says you were killed twice; once with your head, and then the second time without. It makes sense that if someone in Moorwick has it, it’s either a power thing or a generational thing, maybe both. Makes sense, right?”  
  
Your heart lunged against your chest when you felt the weight of the horseman’s body press onto your side while he leaned to get a better look at the notebook in your hand. Just as the words danced on your tongue to reassert boundaries, they were smothered in your throat when he swiped the notebook from you and held it high with his thick gloves.  
  
“What are you doing?! No, give it back! I don’t trust you and your meaty hands!” you squawked, nearly succumbing to the hot surge of anger that gushed through your body and to your hands and fingers gripping the bag, urging you to get in a few solid swings. “Seriously, if you’re that curious, I’ll read it out to you!”  
  
Holding the notebook with one hand, he rested the palm of the other against your face to keep you far at full arm’s length.  
  
Your efforts to get the notebook back had proven fruitless, even though you held some semblance of hope that he still retained enough generosity to return it to you. By the end of that night with the wind screaming around you and cutting into your face, he had returned you to the entrance of the forest with nary an explanation for why he wouldn’t return it, nor his intentions for it.  
  
For four days, you were left to your grievances for your loss, as well as a few coins shorter to repurchase a new one with the hope of recalling all of the details you had painstakingly produced in the original.  
  
It crossed your mind then, one afternoon. Just as the horseman needed for your presence to be around to retrieve his head, you wondered if this was his method of bringing you back to him. After all, you weren’t bound to him or this town aside from good faith in some pretty words; and if you were to leave, he would not be able to follow.  
  
Truthfully, the thought of leaving behind Moorwick for the metropolitan wasn’t something that weaseled its way to the forefront of your mind anymore. You were at peace with the weekly suppers with Asta and Winston, delighted in gossip and laughter with Nellie, and found Colson strangely endearing company now and then.  
  
You knew you’d be a fool to declare those as the forces that kept your apprehensions of everything dormant, though. It was your oath to the horseman, the goodness of your word that made you go back to him. For whatever it was worth, he found this bargain significant to satisfy his own ends, yet he still put value in it.  
  
And you put value in the time you spent at his side.  
  
“It’s strange, the trees never lose their leaves. Moorwick doesn’t have very forgiving winters.” Colson’s voice shredded to the placidity of your thoughts, forcing your breath through your nostrils sharply as your shoulders twitched. “Ah- oh, you were long gone, weren’t you? Ha-ha, sorry.”  
  
His smile seemed genuine to you as he pressed the rim of the cup to his lips, mustering brave sips despite the faint, gray wisps of steam rising from it. For a moment, his eyes moved sidelong towards the window you stared out, perhaps trying to find the same allure in the forest as you.  
  
“Why don’t the trees lose their leaves?” you asked, returning to your mug while pointedly ignoring Nellie’s impish gaze spearing through your back from across the shop. “They’re not some species of pine, or evergreen, right?”  
  
“Mm,” he considered it a moment, nursing the mug close to his mouth. “Trees all look the same to me. Obviously, you can’t grow them in your yard.”  
  
You lifted your brows. “My friend Ines got a notice from the city one time because she grew an apple tree in her backyard.”  
  
“Hah! No kidding?” he barked a laugh, managing to keep from sloshing his coffee around. “I’m sure Asta and Winston could tell you a few stories, too. Do they have you for dinner again this week?”  
  
“Yeah. I feel like I spend more time at their house than dad’s place.” Suddenly, you were reminded of the fact you had come no closer to finding answers regarding his disappearance, even after three months. It weighed your face and shoulders towards the ground. “Sometimes, it just… feels strange. It just doesn’t feel like home, I guess.”  
  
Colson’s lips pulled into a thinner smile, seemingly sympathetic, yet oddly disjointed at the same time. “I can understand that. Oh- right! That reminds me, I got something for you that might be a nice boost.”  
  
From the ground, he hauled a pretty leather briefcase onto his legs. In the dim, orange lighting of the coffee shop, it had a particularly lovely luster of newness to it.  
  
You thought you could smell it, too.  
  
After fussing with the numerous inside pockets, he pulled out an old, yellowed thing that you mistook for an unruled index card at first. It remained there, pinched between his fingers for a while as he looked it over, his expression mirroring the emptiness of the thing he held.  
  
Finally, slowly, he held it out for you. It was a photograph.  
  
At that point, time had taken its toll on it. The glossy lamination had dulled and the stiffness of it had been lost, leaving it soft and fragile against your fingertips as though forgotten in a back pocket for decades. Portions of it were so badly creased that the white backing of it showed through the picture.  
  
It had the scent and look of age as well. 

Inexplicably, the only thing to have fared well through time was Colson. His image was frozen in the photograph, yet he sat adjacent to you now as though he had been pulled from it. There wasn’t a line in his face, nor hair out a place that wasn’t precise when you looked at him now.

The silence began to bother him as the chair groaned as he shifted. “I made yesterday a cleaning day. This… this I found in an old box that I kept from before I was mayor. I thought of you.”  
  
His voice faded into a hum in your mind, eyes transfixed to the man standing next to Colson in the photograph. Dashing in his black suit, you didn’t need a caption or an explanation to know who he was.  
  
“This is… dad,” you wet your lips, swallowing a bulge rising in your throat. “I forgot what he looked like. Mom didn’t want his pictures anywhere, she got rid of everything.”  
  
Colson leaned on his arms, head tilting at the slightest to get a better angle of the picture as well. “I think that was the day he became a notary, and I was accepted into the committee. It was a good day.”  
  
The bridge of your nose began to burn while your chest tightened like a vise. You could feel the divots digging deep into your chin the longer you stared at him.  
  
This feeling was different than you had anticipated it would be. For months, the scenarios churned through your head; you fantasized about what you would say once you were reunited with him, maybe even pop him a shiner for good measure. He wasn’t there with you right now, yet as the pads of your fingers traced along the edges of the photograph, you felt like you were close to him.  
  
“Hey, honey, you doing okay?” Nellie was quick to be at your side, resting a hand atop your shoulders to squeeze them as she pressed her cheek against the top of your head. “Colson, why is it anytime you’re both together, you’re causing some kind of trouble?”  
  
He flipped a hand in the air at first, clearly affronted by the accusation, but remedied this by holding his mug towards her. “Would you mind, Nellie? I think something fresh for us both would be _helpful_.”  
  
Nellie stared at him obliquely as she took both cups away. “You’d better check yourself real quick, rein in that attitude. I’ll be back. You’d better leave me a damn good tip.”  
  
Colson did a doubletake when he found you staring at him. “Something wrong?”  
  
“I’ve been here for three… basically four months. Why are you just now giving this to me?” you pressed, reluctantly lowering the photograph onto the table. “You know I’ve been trying to figure stuff out, this would’ve been nice to have.”  
  
“That photograph is twenty-years-old, I had forgotten we even took this together. He was pretty elusive, didn’t like being photographed for anything.” He replied airly, lowering his briefcase back to the floor.  
  
You caught the glimmer of something in his hand.  
  
“Honestly, we weren’t… close friends, but he was well-liked and I admired him. I think everybody did.” It was a fair explanation. “The sheriff at the time, myself, Asta, Winston- we all launched a search party across town when he went missing. After about a month, it was just taking up too many resources to keep going.”  
  
You were quick to interject, “Asta said that the Atticus was searched.”  
  
To this, Colson gave sharp, breathy laugh as he traced his knuckles along his forehead. “I don’t need to tell you that it would be impossible to search the Atticus. We called some neighboring stations, got some backup, had them go along the borders of it in the morning, during the day.”  
  
“So no one ever actually went in and looked for him?” There was an edge in your tone that Colson met with surprising composure. “Why? It’s just a forest, Colson. It isn’t any different, any more dangerous from any other forest in the world.”  
  
You slid your arms across the small table, getting as near to him as you could tolerate, throat rumbling from your hoarse whisper, “What is this town so afraid of? What are you afraid of?”  
  
For a long while, he simply held your acerbic gaze with one lacking the depth you had expected to arouse. It was then that you felt the warmth of his hand rest across yours, unfurling your fingers so his palm was flush with your own.  
  
“Moorwick hasn’t had anything to be afraid of in a long time.”  
  
Just as you felt the heat of the thing in your hand, the little bell above the door gave a silvery peal, alerting you to the two men walking inside as they retracted their umbrellas.  
  
One look at Maverick Decatur was enough to make your face tighten, making you wither back into your seat beneath this sharp gaze. He wasn’t the unusual sight in Nellie’s shop, however. It was his older companion with a recognizable jaw and eye color nearly hidden by a heavy, deep brow.  
  
“Colson, your agenda seems rather sparse these days,” Theodore announced, moving in facile strides that only seemed appropriate for him. “That errand boy of yours is hollering around the town square for you.”  
  
Perhaps considering this the remnant of his leisure for the day, Colson leaned back in his seat, hooking an arm across the back as he sighed. “Everyone’s got to take a breather now and then, right?”  
  
Theodore bypassed him as anything of interest, intrigued suddenly by you as he lowered his hand down to you, fingers particularly stiff. “Asta’s guest, yes? Theodore Sinclair. My condolences for your father, I often had his help with documents. He spoke well.”  
  
Between the sturdy handshake much more preferable to Decatur’s, and the garbled mess of your mind, you willed a measly, “Thanks, sir.”  
  
“Hm, do you fish at all?” was his next question.  
  
You were confused. “No, not really.”  
  
“Pity,” he grumbled. “Two miles east are the docks, longest stretch of the sea you’ll ever see in your life. I recommend it before you head out of town. Try a Tuesday or Thursday, midday is best.”  
  
With that said, Theodore glanced once more to his son before pivoting and approaching the counter to order a drink. Nellie didn’t disguise her annoyance and anchored a fist atop her hip as she entered his order into the system.  
  
“We don’t got salted caramel.” She said, letting her glossy black nails dance impatiently on the granite countertop.  
  
“Butterscotch syrup will be fine,” Theodore replied, flicking through the cards in his shabby, old wallet. “Add three extra pumps.”  
  
Nellie’s lips curled wide. “Sorry, we don’t have that, either.”  
  
You turned your attention from their interaction when the table jumped closer against your chest as Colson stood from his seat, sliding the strap of his back over his neck. At first, he said nothing else to you, seeming wholly engrossed by his father’s presence for the moment until you also rose to your feet.  
  
“Heading out?” you shrugged the straps of your knapsack comfortably on your shoulders, stealing a fleeting look towards your hand at the single, dingy gold coin he had given you. “What is this for? This looks old as hell.”  
  
He seemed to move more sluggishly than before, almost as though in a trance. Still, you managed to lure a smile onto his face as he gave your arm a hearty clap. “It was your dad’s. He called it a good luck charm, took it with him everywhere. I found it with the picture. Maybe it’ll bring you luck, too.”  
  
All three men had left the coffee shop minutes later; Colson parted with a wink, Theodore with a solemn nod, while sheriff Decatur tipped the brim of his hat with a condemning look when he passed.  
  
Something in that gesture was vaguely threatening, those severe green eyes of his sent a chill rattling down your spine and through your arms. You didn’t have to challenge him, to try to know what it meant.  
  
He knew, and you both knew that you were aware of it as well.  
  
“Maverick is a hard guy to understand, but he and Theodore go back almost thirty-five years. Doesn’t help the Decaturs run all of the police stations in a sixty-mile radius,” Nellie explained, mimicking your discomfort with lasting glimpses towards the door where he had exited. “I’m not trying to scare you, but I’d prefer to have the Sinclairs after my ass rather than the Decaturs. The Sinclairs won’t get their own hands dirty, but the Decaturs… they handle the messy stuff.”  
  
There was little doubt in your mind that she was right, although you hadn’t known the gravity of those words until you were pocketing the key to your father’s home two days later, blanketed by the inky darkness around you, and the stillness that came with the witching hour.  
  
You were surrounded by a benevolent black mist tonight and the stillness that accompanied the approach of winter. The nights rarely greeted you with rain now, rather the softness of white flakes that floated onto your gloves and melted into the fabric.  
  
Just as you turned towards the path to the Atticus, flashlight in hand, you shriveled against a blinding white light that grew far harsher, even hot, the closer it got to you.  
  
“Well now, here I thought I was the only one who liked nightly excursions,” came Maverick Decatur’s familiar drawl. You could just distinguish his features from behind the light. “Don’t think you and I have the same reasons to be out this late, though.”  
  
“I didn’t know town had a curfew.” You rebuffed.  
  
Decatur flicked his light towards your legs, allowing your eyes to acclimate to the night once again. “Nah, of course not. Ain’t gonna stop me for asking where you’re headin’.”  
  
You already knew this wasn’t happenstance; he wasn’t just patrolling so close to your father’s house at this time of night. This man had been staked out for god knows how long, just waiting for this moment to intercept you. To make it worse, you had a suspicion nagging at you that he didn’t intend to let you leave, either.  
  
What could you even say to him right now? You weren’t partial to handling the law; police in the city had loopholes, small-town wannabes operated on a completely different scale of morality and practice.  
  
“I’m just… taking a walk, couldn’t sleep,” you reasoned with an expression that you hoped exaggerated your agitation. “I’ve been doing it for months, I didn’t know it was some kind of problem.”  
  
Decatur spit-out a scoff from behind his mustache, bobbing his head as he listened. “Yeah, I know you have. I know what you’re doing, I know what you’re meddling within the forest, too.”  
  
“_You don’t know shit_.” Those words gushed from between your lips before you could have stopped yourself, the heat flared across your face and ears.  
  
Just as you made a motion to walk around him, you felt is grip around your forearm squeeze like a vise, shoving you backward until your back made a dull thunk against the front door of your house. His arm bent across your body, very nearly pinning you to the door by your throat.  
  
“Listen here you piece of shit, you’d better watch your back, keep your nose out of our business.” He made good of his threat by pointing the light towards the holster at his waist, teasing you with a peek of the gun nestled inside. “You don’t know what you’re doing, what you could do to this town. We ain’t like those pretty boys in the city, we actually take care of our problems out here.”  
  
Your breaths hissed between your teeth as you dug your nails into his sleeve. “Wha-what’s to be afraid of? Colson says nothing’s there. So, what’s the problem, huh?”  
  
The back of your head slammed against the door as the wind rushed from your lungs and throat, just seconds before he dropped you on the front steps. You reached for your head instinctively, fixing your hands against the spot that ached. Decatur’s light swung around violently, almost as though he were moving it himself but you knew it wasn’t the case.  
  
“I’ll be watching.”  
  
Sure enough, the young deputies he had hired a while back parked their cruiser in the same spot down the road every night. For all his brute force, Decatur was a spectacularly methodical man and placed those boys in such a way that it wouldn’t attract prying eyes of gossiping neighbors, yet made it simple enough to track the house at night.  
  
By the fourth night of the forcible house arrest, you had noticed some semblance of a pattern. As much as these kids prided themselves on their vigilance, motivated by some nice words by Decatur and maybe a hefty paycheck bonus, they were ultimately still kids.  
  
And after three hours of monitoring the house, they were bored, their focus wavered and their flashlights did not move from the front door.  
  
You found your way back out the house through the window in your bedroom, raising it far enough to squeeze your body out, minding the squeal the old hinges made as you closed it after you.   
  
With the oncoming winter, Moorwick fell into silence so penetrating and deep that you could hear the foundations of the houses in town settle and groan. You could hear the muffled whispers from televisions, the creak of weak floorboards, and the stones scuffing underfoot.  
  
Although doubtless that Decatur would make good on his promise to you, he kept the great mouth of the forest with its sprawling, spindly trees sparse of just about any men except two or three.  
  
_‘This is definitely a testament to how deep-rooted the fear goes…’_  
  
You crouched low to the ground, moving only a few paces at a time with the dew and mud on the ground seeping through your pants. The tall grass had wilted and browned, leaving the ground bare and ugly, and the imprints of your boots fresh.  
  
The Atticus seemed to welcome you back as the white mist spiraled around you, slithering between your limbs, swaying elegantly with the breeze as though sentient. At this point, you now knew the mist to be an extension of the deity- or perhaps even a part of it.  
  
“Horseman!” you called, groping at your waist to unzip the pocket. “Horseman! I’ve found something!”  
  
As the gusts rose, you cemented yourself to the ground, bracing yourself against a tree. The earmuffs you wore were tight against your ears, deafening the shrieks and cries of the tortured and the dead that followed at the heels of his steed. You still clenched your eyes tight though, always envisioning the faces of the creatures to appear before you if you didn’t.  
  
All at once, the wind settled and you heard a snort from the alabaster steed along with the heaviness of the horseman’s body as he dismounted. You didn’t wait for him to reach you, instead, you stalked through the mud and water, shoving the photograph out in front of him once you were close enough.  
  
“That man-that man on the left. That’s the man I need you to help me find.” The thickness of his gloves made it hard for him to hold something so fragile, let alone allow him to see much of the picture at all. “He’s my dad. You see everything, do you ever remember seeing him?”  
  
He didn’t move for a long time, you even ventured to say he looked tense. Your eyes darted between him and the photo until your head spun, anticipating some kind of reaction.  
  
And when he gave you one, it wasn’t what you were expecting.  
  
The photograph was crushed tightly against his palm, prompting you to lunge forward and claw furiously at his hand. “No, no! Stop it! Not this, not to this! Open your hand, _now_!”  
  
He hesitated, perhaps taken aback by the ferocity of your words, but complied. You took some time to smooth it out as best you could, although the timeworn damage was irreversible and so were the new ones he created.  
  
“What is your fucking problem?” you resisted the urge to put your hands on him. “This is the only picture I’ve ever had of him.”  
  
You didn’t budge when he stepped closer, his chest nearly skimming your cheek as he snatched it from your hands, repeatedly jabbing his finger against one side.  
  
When you could finally fix your light to what he was pointing at, you felt the air snag in your throat as your jaw fell slack.  
  
The horseman was pointing to Colson.


End file.
